


Where There Was Fire, Ashes Remain

by Rubytaire



Series: Burnt peaches [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Niffin Quentin, Season/Series 04, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 67,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23518189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubytaire/pseuds/Rubytaire
Summary: He thought the memory of his past self turning Quentin down was the worst thing he had ever seen, but the sight of Quentin wreathed in blue flames and writhing in agony eclipses that instantly.Quentin freed Eliot from the Monster and lost himself in the process. It's not the choice Eliot would have made.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Burnt peaches [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685206
Comments: 107
Kudos: 170





	1. Chapter 1

The Cottage is shaking.

Not in the way Eliot is used to: it's nothing like how, after a few too many cocktails, the walls and floor seem to conspire to place Eliot's reputation as the most graceful creature alive in jeopardy.

No. This is pure, 100%, this-is-not-a-drill, earthquake-level vibration. Which is probably not a good sign when the Cottage that's threatening to tear itself apart is also the only thing keeping you from having your consciousness' metaphorical organs ripped from your metaphorical torso.

"So. This is new."

No reply. Not entirely unexpected: Charlton hasn't been particularly verbose since getting stabbed in the side during Eliot's bid for freedom. Still, it might have been nice to have someone confirm whether Eliot was looking down the barrel of his own personal extinction event.

Eliot's drinks station commits suicide in a resounding crash of glass, whilst at the same time the 'T' and 'D' of the Cottage's decorative TADA lights leap off the wall to their doom, leaving only AA behind.

Probably fitting.

"Let's review the options." Eliot muses to himself, trying to ignore the sound of the banister splintering and giving way behind him. "I can stay in here, waiting to be crushed under the weight of my own memories. Or I can go outside, where various primordial monsters are waiting to tear me limb from limb. Such a vast and appealing array of options to choose from."

The shelving behind the couch collapses with a low, drawn-out grumble, sending a myriad of bottles and glasses raining down where Eliot is sitting.

"Jesus! Alright, outside it is!" Eliot barks, stumbling over to the door and yanking it open only to shut it immediately at the sight of several screeching eldritch horrors swarming the Brakebills campus in a panic.

"Great. Just great." Suddenly, he realises what he's been doing. "I'm going to die alone, talking to myself like a crazy person."

"Not alone." Eliot starts at the feeling of a small hand sliding into his. A glance to his right reveals Fen in the earthy ensemble she wore when informing him that she was stuck with him and he was stuck with her. He remembers trying to be witty at the time, brushing off her sentiment with a comment about whether they could class her words as touching or not.

"Fen."

"What, were we meant to come up with something meaningful to say? Fuck my life."

Eliot grins, looking to where Margo is standing with her arms crossed to his left, clothed in one of her more spectacular Fillorian dresses.

"Bambi." He breathes, wrapping his free arm around her and pressing a firm kiss against her forehead. "Looks like we're getting the band back together."

There are worse ways to die, he supposes. Acid. A thousand papercuts. In the clothes section of a Target store. He just wishes he'd got to see...

"Hey. Um, uh, don't forget me."

Quentin.

Eliot looks up to see Quentin perched awkwardly on the arm of the couch. With his hair loose and messy about his shoulders, and his unfashionable black hoodie, jeans and t-shirt combo, there's only one Q this could be.

"I really wanted to be brave for you." Eliot tells him honestly. Quentin smiles, pushing himself up and making his way across the rolling floor to the trio.

"You have been. And you will." He promises, gently cupping Eliot's face in his hands. Eliot huffs, letting Quentin pull him down and press their foreheads together.

"I think this is goodbye, Q." He murmurs, letting his eyes drift shut. Margo is a warm line against his side and Fen's hand is tight in his. There's a certain peace descending on him. If he can't see them in person again, at least he gets to go out surrounded by the memories of those he loves most.

"No, Eliot Waugh," His conjured-up version of Quentin whispers. "This is just the beginning."

* * *

And Eliot opens his eyes.

* * *

The first thing he's aware of is the fact that every inch of him aches. It feels like someone shoved him in a dryer and flipped it to the max setting. It's not an entirely foreign sensation: it reminds him in some ways of the legendary four-day hangover he experienced after his first Encanto Oculto, when every fibre of his body protested loudly and viciously against what he had put it through that week.

All that is dwarfed into obscurity, however, as he tunes in enough to become aware of the second thing.

Q is screaming.

It takes everything left in him to summon the strength to push himself up to his knees and when he finally manages it he immediately wishes he hadn't.

He thought the memory of his past self turning Quentin down was the worst thing he had ever seen, but the sight of Quentin wreathed in blue flames and writhing in agony eclipses that instantly.

"Q!" He gasps out, his voice hoarse and sputtering. " _Q_!"

For a brief moment, Quentin turns to him, nothing more than a silhouette on fire, the empty blue holes where his eyes should be staring blankly down at Eliot as he screams.

Then even that is lost to blue flame, and Quentin is gone.

"No." Eliot chokes out, crashing back down to the floor. "Nononononono. _No_!"

It can't be. It just can't. The universe can't be so cruel, surely. With everything he's been through, all the _shit_ that's been thrown at him, there's no way that destiny is spiteful enough to release him just in time to watch Quentin die.

Hasn't he suffered enough yet? Hasn't _Q_?

Eliot curls into himself, breath a harsh and rapid echo in his ears. He desperately wants a drink.

"Eliot?" The hands that touch him are tentative, uncertain. Probably unsure whether they're touching him or the Monster, Eliot thinks bitterly. He wonders if there's a difference.

He's no fool. There's only one reason why he's here and Quentin is gone.

"Waugh? Say something, man."

Slowly, Eliot uncurls. Strong hands help him to sit up and he's suddenly face to face with Julia and Penny-23 as they crouch next to him. Penny looks tense, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Julia's a mess; her eyes are smeared with black where her make-up has run and there are tear tracks all down her cheeks.

"Hey." He manages and Julia's face crumples. He barely manages to keep both of them vaguely upright as she throws herself at him, sobbing into his neck.

On any other day, Eliot would have frozen – he's never exactly had the best relationship with Hedge Bitch, after all – but in this moment he just wraps his arms around her and holds on desperately. She feels small and vulnerable against him, tiny body jerking helplessly with each harsh sob. Eliot clings to her and lets her cry for the both of them, unwilling even now to let his tears fall in front of others. His eyes burn.

God, he wishes his Bambi was here.

Eventually, Julia's crying slows. She pulls back, rubbing shamefacedly at her eyes.

"Sorry. That's not what you needed. I just...Q would have been so happy to hear the real you again. He's the one who...he was casting to pull the Monster out of your body when he...when he..." She flounders, searching for the term.

"Niffined out." Eliot whispers.

"He wouldn't stop. Even when his hands started smoking. He just kept going." She murmurs and Eliot flinches at the confirmation of his earlier suspicions.

Quentin died for him.

Stupid selfless fucker.

"As beautiful as this moment is, we need to get going." Penny cuts in. His eyes are nervously flicking side to side and every line of his body screams caution. For the first time, Eliot stops to take in where they are.

"Are we...in the Library?" He asks incredulously, looking around at the bookshelves surrounding them and the strange washed out greys that Eliot's only ever seen once before in his life. "What on earth are we...?"

"We'll explain later. We gotta go." Penny says tersely, reaching for Eliot's hand. Eliot yanks it away, his own eyes darting around the space.

"We can't."

"Are you kidding, man? Those Librarians aren't going to be in any mood to take prisoners after that bloodbath!" 

" _Bloodbath_? What...no. Tell me later. But we can't leave."

" _Why_?" Penny all but howls in frustration. Eliot sets his jaw and matches his glare with one of his own.

"When Alice niffined out, she reappeared in the same place. What if Quentin..."

"You think Q's going to come back here." Julia breathes. Eliot nods. He's sure of it.

"And you want to hang around for that? Didn't she try to _murder_ you and Margo pretty much immediately?" Penny spits scathingly.

"If anyone can hold onto themselves as a niffin, it's Quentin." Julia says loyally. Eliot opens his mouth to agree, only to freeze at the sound of voices shouting a few aisles over.

"Yeah, fuck this shit." Penny snarls, grabbing Julia's arm and slamming a hand down on Eliot's shoulder. Eliot jerks back with a shout, but it's too late. By the time the motion is completed they're already standing in the middle of an unfamiliar kitchen.

"You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?" Julia hisses, her eyes watery as she storms off. Penny throws his arms wide open with an incredulous laugh.

"What, you'd rather have waited around for those suited freaks to tear us limb from limb?"

"Fuck you!" A door slams somewhere in the apartment. Penny groans, scrubbing vigorously at his face with both hands. He glares at Eliot through his fingers.

"What about you, Waugh? Any other charming sentiments for me?"

Eliot does, in fact, have several charming sentiments for him. But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. Instead, a wave of exhaustion washes over him and he fumbles for one of the nearby stools.

"Waugh?" Now Penny looks concerned. "Is there anything I can do?"

Eliot shudders, burying his face in his hands and fighting the urge to laugh hysterically.

"Can you take me back to an hour ago?" He asks. He can hear Penny shift awkwardly behind him; he can practically hear the man's internal dialogue as he debates how to respond.

"I was thinking more of fetching you something, or helping you to the couch." The other man says finally. Eliot snorts.

"Then no. I'm fine." He's not fine. He feels strangely hollow, like someone scooped out all his insides. It's not until Penny's footsteps have retreated that he suddenly realises what it is he really wants.

"Penny?"

The footsteps stop.

"Yeah?"

"Could you go and get Margo, please?"

Silence. Then, softly:

"Sure thing, man."

And Eliot is alone once more.

* * *

Hours later, they sit together in the darkening apartment, silently watching the shadows creep across the room as evening sets in. Josh set out little bowls of food on the faux marble coffee table earlier, giving the set-up the distinct look of a party.

No one's touched a thing.

Curled up on the couch beside him, Margo shifts and draws breath as if to speak, only to change her mind and settle back against him. She and Eliot had their reunion earlier, clinging desperately to each other almost as soon as Penny dropped her off. Her eyes were suspiciously wet and shiny, but she didn't cry. Even when Eliot managed to choke out what happened to Quentin, she didn't cry.

Eliot knows her well enough to understand what that means. Where others might take her to be heartless, he knows that just means she's going to bury her hurt deep down until she can't manage it any more. She'll cry in her own time.

Across the room, slouched down in one of the padded green chairs, Penny is watching Julia. She only emerged from her room half an hour ago and has spent most of the time since avoiding making eye contact with anyone. Now she sits tucked up by herself on the other side of the massive couch to Eliot and Margo, alternating between fiddling distractedly with one of the many necklaces she's wearing and twisting her rings around her fingers. She at least took the time to remove her ruined make-up from earlier, though the sight of her bare, drawn face is equally distressing in a wholly different way. As far as Eliot's aware, she hasn't spoken to anyone since they got back from the Library.

From over by the window, Kady makes a disgusted noise.

"Screw this." She snarls, shoving off from the window seat and stalking off into the kitchen. She re-emerges after only a few moments, laden down with bottles. Slamming two down onto the table and making everyone jump, she keeps the other for herself and throws herself back onto the couch next to Julia.

"Get drinking." She twists the cap off the whiskey and chugs it, rolling her eyes as she notices the shocked looks from the others. "What, you think he would have liked to see this little pity party we've got going on here? We should at least be sharing our feelings, or shit like that."

"You know, I didn't exactly have you down as a sharer." Margo drawls. Kady shoots her a withering look.

"I'm not. Hence the alcohol. So drink up."

Eliot doesn't need any further prompting. He grabs the bottle nearest to him and gulps it down, wrinkling his nose at the taste. Marina may have had good taste in interior decor, but her choice of alcohol leaves much to be desired.

They drink in silence for a while, passing the bottles back and forth amongst them. Occasionally they'll look at each other, waiting for someone to summon up the courage to break the oppressive hush that's fallen over them. But no one does and they just keep drinking.

To Eliot's surprise, it's Julia who finally speaks out.

"It's bullshit." She announces, looking surprised by her own words. "He deserved better. After all the crap he went through this past year, he didn't deserve to go out like that."

"Some people might call it heroic." Josh tries. Julia laughs bitterly. Her hands shake as she lifts the bottle for another swig.

"Yeah, well they're not the ones who are going to have to live without him, are they? They aren't the ones who have to live with the memory of Q _going up in flames in front of them_ , knowing there's _nothing_ they can do."

Eliot flinches. He can still hear those final terrible screams echoing in his head. Margo reaches over and grips his hand tightly. On the other end of the couch, Kady is doing the same for Julia.

"You and Quentin got Alice back, didn't you? Couldn't we just do whatever you did for her?" Josh asks helplessly. Julia just shakes her head. When she speaks, her voice is choked with tears.

"Sure. We'll just go and ask Mayakovsky the bear if he has any more of those magic batteries lying around. It's not like they took years to make or anything. And I'm sure we can get another god to just hand over a Shade if we take our own out to transport Quentin's. Easy, right?"

Josh slumps back in his seat. For a while, nobody speaks. The sheer enormity of what has happened is starting to sink in.

Quentin's gone.

Eliot tries to imagine waking up tomorrow knowing that he now lives in a world without Quentin Coldwater and finds he can't. Quentin has woven himself into the fabric of Eliot's life, as essential to him as breathing. The old Eliot – foolish, naive Eliot, who had no idea what he was letting himself in for – would have laughed at the idea. He'd taken one look at the bumbling Brakebills candidate stumbling awkwardly out of the trees and immediately marked him as prey. Just another first-year boy to seduce and then discard when he'd had his fill.

How little he knew. But then again, who could have possibly been prepared for the sheer wonder that was Quentin Coldwater? How could Eliot have known that this stuttering disaster of a human being would worm his way past Eliot's defences as easily as breathing and set up shop in what little remained of his heart? How could he have realised that Quentin was exactly the sort of dangerous human that believes in you so strongly that you can't help trying to be a better person for them, long before you even realise you're changing?

If only he'd known then what he knows now. All that wasted time.

He snorts, thinking of Quentin's lost and confused face when he first saw Brakebills. The poor boy's head would have exploded if Eliot had made a move then.

"El?" Margo is frowning at him, eyes dark with worry. "You okay?"

"I was just remembering what Quentin's face looked like the first time he stumbled onto campus." Eliot says, choosing to adapt the truth slightly for public hearing. Margo sparks up immediately, a wicked grin crossing her face.

"It took weeks before he stopped looking like a frightened rabbit around me. I'd been starting to wonder what you saw in him."

"Liar. You liked him just as much. I could tell."

Margo preens, smoothing out her skirt.

"What can I say? The kid grew on me."

"He was good at that." Julia says quietly. Kady smiles, squeezing her hand.

"He was the kind of person you could never really bring yourself to hate. And believe me, I tried."

"Do you remember when he tried to use magic to cook the perfect egg?" Margo reminisces. Eliot chuckles.

"You mean the time Q painted most of the kitchen, including Todd, with egg yolk? Of course I do." He sighs, looking back on the memory fondly. "That day will stay with me forever."

"He did what?" Julia's mouth twitches. Of course – she wasn't there for that.

"Let's just say that dear Q's place was certainly not in the kitchen. Or the garden."

"Or anything remotely domestic. Laundry day was traumatic." Kady interjects and there is a ripple of laughter from the Physical Kids at the memory of Quentin flailing around in a panic, looking more snowman than Magician as he attempted to stop the rapidly multiplying bubbles threatening to drown him where he stood.

"Oh, he was never any good at that." Julia smirks. "Even as a kid. He'd wander off in the middle of his chores and stick his head in a Fillory book. His dad would come home to find the laundry room flooded."

Eliot can picture that so, so easily: a smaller version of Quentin curled up in an armchair, lost in his imagination as the washing machine sputters out its death throes below him. He feels a pang of loss for that mislaid innocence.

"We always said we'd go to Fillory together." Julia continues softly. "We'd lie under my table and look up at the map we drew together and plan where we were going to go first."

"And then he grew up to be a king of Fillory." Josh grins.

"Royalty, bitches." Eliot and Margo chorus, dissolving into giggles.

"He achieved his childhood dream. There's not many who can say they managed that." Kady points out.

"And even though it turned out to be more of a fucking nightmare than a dream, he still persevered." Penny finally speaks up. He's stayed quiet up to now, presumably feeling he had no place remembering a man he never really knew in this timeline. "My Quentin was the same, I guess."

"He wasn't the best Magician. He wasn't the smartest, or the most powerful. God _knows_ he wasn't the most patient. But he was ours." Margo says quietly. Penny grabs for the vodka, raising it high.

"To Coldwater."

"To Q."

"To Quentin."

"To Quentin."

One by one, they raise a bottle and take a swig from it. Julia's eyes are damp again when it comes to her turn, but her voice is strong as she toasts her lost friend.

"To Q. I hope you get to find the real wonders of magic now."

"What can I say? I'm working on it."

Julia drops the bottle. It smashes on the floor beside her, whiskey washing over her shoes, but she pays no attention to it. Nobody does: their eyes are firmly locked on the figure that's appeared in the doorway.

"Q." Julia breathes.

Quentin smiles, rolling off the doorframe with a fluidity he never possessed in life and sauntering further into the room. Eliot stares at him, eyes hungrily sweeping over his form. At first glance, he seems no different to the hapless nerd Eliot knows so well; if it weren't for the blue streaks of fire that run through his skin and sizzle out, he might be fooled into thinking the memory of Quentin burning was nothing more than a nightmare.

And yet, the differences are so obvious at the same time. All those anxious twitches and tics are gone. Quentin seems comfortable, at ease in his skin even with its blue crackles of magic. Each step is firm with a confidence Quentin never quite managed to achieve even in his most determined moments. This is a Quentin who finally feels he belongs in the world.

Julia stands up, her eyes never leaving Quentin.

"Q, is it really you?"

"Hey, Jules." Quentin greets her. "It's me. In the flesh. So to speak."

"I don't...I mean...how are you?" Julia drifts closer, drawn to what remains of her best friend. Penny reaches out as she passes him, pressing a restraining hand against her hip.

"Be careful. That's not Coldwater. Not really." He reminds her. Julia looks back at Quentin, face a picture of agony.

"But..."

Quentin rolls his eyes.

"Ah, Penny. So suspicious." He holds out his hands to Julia. "It's me, Jules. Really."

Pushing past Penny, Julia stumbles across the room, reaching out to Quentin and letting him pull her closer.

"I thought we'd lost you. We were going to wait, but the Librarians were coming and..."

"Shush." Quentin hushes her, drawing her into his arms. "It's okay. It's okay."

Julia melts into the embrace with a sob, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. It's a sweet moment and for an instant Eliot dares to hope.

And then it all goes wrong.

"Q." Julia suddenly says, beginning to squirm. "Q, wait. Something's wrong."

She moves to pull away but Quentin just holds on, starting to snicker as the sound of burning flesh makes itself heard. Julia cries out.

"Q, stop! You're hurting me!"

The old Quentin would have let go immediately, leaping away from her as if electrocuted.

This Quentin tightens his grip as Julia struggles. This Quentin laughs and laughs and laughs.

"Jesus." Margo breathes, eyes wide and face pale.

Penny swears, jumping to his feet only to go flying across the room before he can get further than a step or two. Quentin just laughs harder.

"Get the fuck away from her!" Kady snarls, sending a blast of battle magic towards him. Quentin stumbles at the impact, giving Julia just enough leverage to wriggle herself free and flee back to the group.

"You okay?" Josh asks, reaching for her. Julia wordlessly holds up her arms, revealing the already flawlessly healed skin.

"How about you, 23? You good?" Kady calls, glancing back over her shoulder briefly before slipping back into attack form.

Groaning, Penny sits up, gingerly pushing himself to his feet. "I'm good. I think."

And through it all, Quentin keeps cackling.

Eliot stares at him, this shadow of a person who once would have rather died than hurt someone for no reason, who now seems to be finding great hilarity in his childhood best friend's pain. He can't recognise his friend in this creature.

"The fuck is wrong with you, Coldwater?" Penny gripes, setting his own hands in a defensive casting position. Quentin tilts his head, disappearing only to reappear right in front of Penny.

"Christ!" Penny pinwheels backwards in shock. Quentin laughs harder, eyes sparking blue as the group clump together around the Traveller. Clapping his hands, he vanishes once more.

"Behind us!" Margo yells and the group turns as one. Kady makes a cutting gesture but Quentin just winks and disappears again long before the magic can hit.

"Fool me once." He whispers in Josh's ear, making the Naturalist jump and shriek. He vanishes again before Kady can take aim, reappearing to their left.

"I can't hit him!" Kady grimaces, whirling to face him. Quentin starts laughing again, disappearing only to appear behind them, by the kitchen counter, to their left, on the dining table...

"Is anyone else starting to feel like the mouse the cat plays with before eating?" Margo bites out, spinning to face Quentin's latest position. Penny snarls, throwing a bowl of chips at Quentin and swearing when he just vanishes again.

"We need a fucking plan here!"

And through it all, Quentin won't stop laughing, clapping his hands in amusement and vanishing only to reappear over and over again around the apartment, laughing even harder at the way they keep jumping and rotating to face him.

It is, quite frankly, creepy as hell, and Eliot can't stand it anymore.

"Quentin, just stop already!" The words burst out of him without thought and he braces himself for the increase in hysterical laughter that's sure to follow.

Except it doesn't. Instead, it stops altogether.

From across the room, Quentin slowly lowers his hands, tilting his head as he focuses in on Eliot. One of Kady's spells finally find their target but he barely blinks, winking out of existence only to materialise crouched in front of the couch where Eliot has been frozen in place since Quentin first appeared.

"Get the fuck out of there, El." Margo hisses, but he can't. Can't even think about attempting those few stumbling steps over to where everyone else ended up, not with Quentin's eyes pinning him in place.

There's an odd expression on his face as he stares silently at Eliot, something longing and wistful and glad. Eliot looks back into flat blue eyes and wishes they were a warm hazel instead.

"You're okay now. I wanted to be sure." Quentin murmurs. And it's such a Quentin thing to say that Eliot's eyes widen and he reaches for him on instinct, despite what just happened to Julia.

"Q...?"

But he never gets to touch him. Quentin just smiles and vanishes. And this time he doesn't come back.

Eliot lets his hand drop, gazing at the spot where Quentin last was. For a moment, everyone remains motionless. Then Julia collapses down into the seat nearest to her, sucking in a shuddering breath, and the others quickly follow suit.

They sit there in shocked silence, staring mutely at one other across the shadowy space until Margo finally takes it upon herself to break the unspoken stand-off.

"What the _fuck_ just happened?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle in, folks, we're in for a bumpy ride.
> 
> I took my title from a translated Spanish saying which (according to the internet, which we all know is always 100% accurate and true) apparently means that where there was some kind of feeling, there'll always be at least a little of it, whatever happens.
> 
> Even if that translation is made up, I feel that sentiment really fits this story and will become increasingly relevant as we continue.
> 
> I'm really looking forward to writing more of Niffin Q. It's something I started thinking about during season 2 - what happens when the heart of the group loses that heart? Who do they become?


	2. Chapter 2

Afterwards, they ward the apartment as tightly as they can.

Bit by bit they add to Marina's wards, carefully building layer after layer of protection into the walls and windows. They cast until the whole place is a tangled web of glowing lines, each fortifying thread painstakingly woven into a fabric of invisible armour.

And then they cast some more.

Eliot finishes his section and stumbles back to the massive couch, dropping down next to where Julia has been sat watching them. Unable to do more than point out gaps in their casting, she's instead spent the time picking up the chips that went everywhere when Penny failed to hit Quentin.

Quentin. God.

He'd seen Alice as a niffin. Had even nearly met his end at her hands when she decided she wasn't quite ready yet to stop killing. He knew first-hand exactly how much of a person the fire burned away, stripping away everything that mattered until all that was left was spite and violence and power.

He'd still not been prepared for what had become of Quentin.

Quentin, who had once confessed to barely being able to stomach the thought of controlling a simple bug. Quentin, who had always felt so easily and so deeply, whose tender heart had been battered and broken and had still beat so strongly for a world that kept turning its back on him. Quentin, who had kissed him so sweetly on the mosaic, who had cherished Teddy, who had loved Eliot for fifty years and still managed to look at him every day like he hung the moon every night.

Quentin, who had purposefully tricked his childhood friend so that he could hurt her.

Quentin, who had found it hilarious to torment his friends and just laughed harder at their terror.

Quentin, who had...stopped when Eliot had asked.

"How are you holding up?" Julia asks quietly, butting into the torturous circle of his thoughts. Eliot raises an eyebrow, staring at her incredulously.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? I'm not the one who just got flame grilled."

She smiles wanly, holding her arms up for inspection in much the same way as she did for Josh earlier.

"Invulnerable. Perk of being an ex-goddess. As soon as Q let go, I was fine."

"Ah." The conversation dies and they sit in silence for a moment, listening to the muted cursing and commentary floating over from where the others are finishing up.

"So. How are you holding up?" Julia presses. If Eliot ever wondered why she and Quentin were friends, here's his answer. In the past six hours she's watched her best friend burn alive, been emotionally manipulated by the malicious magical spirit of said best friend, and has been subjected to a bit of light torturing. And she still wants to check on Eliot.

"Oh, you know me. I'm always peachy." Eliot says lightly, ignoring the stab of pain that comes just from the mere mention of the fruit.

_Peaches and plums. Peaches and plums..._

Julia narrows her eyes, clearly not fooled.

"Don't fuck with me, Eliot. You think I don't know something was going on between you two? Q's always gone the extra mile for his friends, but that? What he's been like these past few weeks? The last time I saw him come anywhere close was when he was trying to get Alice back. You weren't just friends, were you?"

Eliot flinches, gripping the couch edge with a white-knuckle-grip and fighting back the memory of Quentin sitting on the throne room steps, crushed and humiliated.

"Eliot?"

"We weren't together." He says haltingly, the words tearing themselves from his throat. A hot poker twists through his insides. "We could have been. Q...Q asked. But I fucked it all up."

_Why the fuck not?_

Because Eliot knew losing Quentin later down the line would be more than he could bear. And then he went and did it anyway.

"Oh. I didn't...oh." Eliot waits for the rejection he so rightfully deserves. To his surprise, however, Julia just slides closer and rests her head on his shoulder.

It should be strange. He spent so long hating her for what she did to Quentin. And after she sacrificed her powers for the keys he never got a chance to get to know her before being mindwiped by Fogg and then taken for a ride by the Monster.

This should be, by all rights, the most awkward physical contact he's experienced since Kevin the clingy Illusionist failed to comprehend the nature of a one-night stand in Eliot's first year.

And yet it feels so natural that Eliot can't help himself from relaxing into the touch. For the first time, he wonders what it would have been like if Julia had come to Brakebills with Q. Would they have been friends? Would Julia have joined him and Margo in good-naturedly torturing Quentin until he turned bright red and tried to hide behind his glass?

"He forgave you. You know that, right? He'd have forgiven you the moment you turned him down, no matter how much he was hurting." Julia whispers. Eliot closes his eyes, fighting down the sudden wave of emotion struggling to burst free. Because truthfully? He knew that already. Quentin was far too good a person not to.

It doesn't stop him feeling guilty whenever he remembers sending Q off to 'be life partners with someone else for a while' though. Christ, that was callous.

"So, the apartment's warded up to its tits now. Anyone got a plan?"

Eliot's eyes snap open. At some point, the others finished up and are now sat opposite him and Julia, looking awkward. Well, Josh, Penny and Kady look awkward. Margo looks something that Eliot might have labelled jealous if he didn't have a healthy appreciation for living a pain-free life where possible.

"Well?" She snaps, crossing her arms and eyeing Julia with disdain. "Either of you two fuckwads come up with anything while you were sat on your asses?"

Definitely not-jealous.

"We're good, right?" Josh tries. "I mean, we've got our wards now. No way anything could get in here now."

Margo turns to him, sweet smile dripping soft, soft poison from every word.

"Sure. Which is all well and good until we go out to get toothpaste and find ourselves torn limb from limb by a bored niffin on the way home."

Josh winces, shrinking back into himself. "So. Plans, guys?"

"Q wouldn't do that." Julia says firmly. Penny lets out a loud bark of laughter.

"Maybe not. But what's left of him definitely would. Or did you miss the part where he just went all super-happy-murder-time on our asses?"

"Is there any chance that he'll leave us alone now that he's had his fun?" Kady asks. "Alice stayed away once Quentin released her."

" _Alice_ would have killed us if Q hadn't set his cacodemon on her." Margo spits. "And by the time he finally released her, she would have been so fed up that she must have run all the way to the other end of the universe."

"Alright, jeez! I was only asking." Kady exclaims. She pauses, eyes widening slightly. "Shit. Alice. Do you think one of us should tell her?"

There's an awkward silence as they all consider how much energy they should spend tracking down someone who fucked them over so royally before.

"Fuck her." Margo decides. "She lost all rights to the groupchat when she flipped out on us."

"Seems a bit harsh. She was his girlfriend, after all." Josh says diplomatically. Margo's eyes flash.

"Ex-girlfriend. And if you want to waste your time looking for her, Josh, be my guest. I'm more concerned with making sure Niffin Quentin doesn't try to burn my face off next time I leave the apartment."

"I can't believe we're having this conversation." Julia murmurs. "Who would have ever thought we'd be warding ourselves against Q?"

"Oh, please. Take it from someone who's already lived through one timeline where Quentin lost his Shade. Those wards are 100% necessary." Penny glowers. Which is...news to Eliot, though Julia and Josh look like they know all too well what 23's talking about.

Somehow, he gets the feeling that he doesn't want to know.

"He's unpredictable and clearly dangerous. He may not be a direct threat, but we'd be fools not to have some sort of back-up plan here." Kady says more tactfully.

Something about the way she says 'back-up plan' makes Eliot's spine stiffen.

"And what, pray tell, do you mean by 'back-up plan'?" He drawls, eyes narrowing. Penny snorts.

"She means, _genius_ , that we need a way to get rid of him if need be."

" _No_." Unthinkable.

"It wasn't a suggestion."

"You can't be serious." Eliot bites out, looking around the group. Penny and Kady meet his gaze head-on, no sign of backing down. Josh looks shame-faced but clearly agrees. He whirls to look at Margo, seeking support.

"Bambi!" He pleads. She doesn't blink, lifting her head high. Eliot laughs incredulously. "You can't be serious. It's _Q_."

"No, El, it's not. Not anymore." Seeing Eliot open his mouth to argue, she slams her hand down on the coffee table. "You think I like this any more than you do? I can count on one hand the number of people I actually care about in this world and Quentin is one of them. But if it's a choice between him and us, I'm choosing us."

"Julia, help me out here!" He spins to face her, pulse thundering in his ears. "There's gotta be another option."

Julia looks destroyed by the conversation, eyes rimmed with red and lower lip trembling. But she nods, and with that one gesture razes all of Eliot's remaining hopes to the ground.

"Margo's right. That's not Q. Not without his Shade. We need a way to protect ourselves if he does come for us."

"I can't believe this. I can't _believe_ we're seriously talking about this." Eliot spits, leaping to his feet. He glares at the group before him in disgust.

"Quentin has done so much for all of us. He would never give up on any of us." Except maybe Penny-23, but he keeps that private. "But at the first sign of trouble, you're throwing him to the wolves? I can't bear to look at you."

He storms off, fleeing into the room Penny nudged him towards earlier and slamming the door behind him. Once safely sealed off from the outside world he paces, feverishly moving up and down the small space as he tries to make sense of everything.

There's a knock at the door.

"El?" Margo.

"Go away!" He shouts. The door opens immediately, because since when has Margo Hanson ever let anybody tell her what to do?

"You're being absurd." She greets him, crossing the room to stand in his path. Eliot scoffs and tries to shove past her, only for her to grab him by the arms.

"Listen to me. None of us want this. Even 23 isn't that much of a raging dick. But we'd be the worst kind of idiots if we didn't have some sort of plan. We'd be like lambs to the slaughter and honey, we both know that white is barely my colour."

Eliot crumples, something fragile and precious cracking inside him.

"He sacrificed himself to save me, Bambi." He whispers, letting the poisonous truth out into the world for the first time. "It should be him standing here right now, arguing with you guys about whatever plan you're making. Not me."

Margo throws her arms around him, somehow making herself feel like a giant despite her petite frame.

"Don't you ever say that." She snaps furiously. "You deserve to be here, Eliot."

"But Q..."

"Q made his choice. And he chose you, because he knew you were worth it. To say anything else would make that decision meaningless."

Eliot shatters. All the tears he's held back so far rush forth in a torrent that overwhelms all the dams he's been so carefully building inside of him. He drops to his knees with an animal howl, Margo's strong grip the only thing stopping him from crashing down face first into the plush carpet.

"Oh god. Oh god, El, honey." Margo's voice is thick with her own tears. Eliot can feel her hands shaking through his waistcoat.

"We lost him, Margo." He gasps, the bite of reality bitter and cruel. " _I_ lost him."

No more endless nights downing wine until they're too drunk to do anything more than crawl into bed. No more laughter, or tucking Q under his chin, or feeling Q's warm body pressed against his as the evening chill settles in.

No more chances to be brave.

"No." Margo seizes Eliot by the chin, forcing him to look at her. "That is not what's happening here. We're protecting ourselves, _not_ giving up on him. Whatever spells we come up with will be used if and when they're needed; if you think we're not going to try our damnedest to save him, you're a fool, Eliot Waugh."

Eliot's breath catches in his throat. His confusion must show in his face, because Margo just sighs and smoothes his hair back in an unusually maternal gesture for her.

"Back when the Monster first showed himself to us – the rest of us, I mean, he'd already been lugging Quentin around like a favourite chewtoy – there was a way to knock him out. A trap Marina had set."

"And?"

"I didn't use it."

"What?"

"I couldn't take the risk that you were in there and it killed you. I wanted to buy myself time to save you. And that's exactly what we're doing with Quentin."

Eliot pulls her close, burying his face in her stomach. Margo squeezes him back, pressing her wet cheek to his.

"That doesn't mean we won't use whatever we came up with if needed. The Monster killed people – that's on me. If there's even the slightest chance that Quentin is going to hurt someone? We owe it to him to take him out before that happens."

Staying silent, Eliot tightens his grip.

They'll find a way; they always do. They just need time.

* * *

Time is, apparently, something they have in spades.

According to the books, niffin boxes take a month to prepare. After the initial carving of the wood chunks, they just need to cast every day at dawn, dusk and midnight. No eight hours beauty sleep for them for a while. Which Penny, being Penny, of course complains about, though a sharp look from Julia and the reminder that they're trying to find a way to destroy her best friend shuts him up pretty quickly.

The rest of the time is spent poring over the books in Marina's apartment and trying to sort through Google results for the few genuine websites to have survived Brakebill's yearly purge. They live off takeaway ordered by phone and delivered by overly chirpy couriers until Eliot finally snaps and demands that they order a proper load of groceries with actual greens next time.

There's something soothing about taking a few hours off to dart about the kitchen with nothing to worry about except getting timings to perfection. Kady and Julia are visibly impressed by the results and Josh doesn't mention the slightly overdone sauce, which Eliot supposes means his first meal is a success.

After that, he and Josh trade off in the kitchen. Occasionally they'll both work on a meal, Josh chattering blithely away as Eliot cuts the artichokes in silence. But those moments are a rarity and most of the time Eliot gets to escape reality in peaceful solitude as he focuses exclusively on creating the perfect glaze.

Because the reality is that they're getting nowhere.

Oh, the niffin boxes are coming along swimmingly. Every day, the spell sparks a little stronger as they make the necessary incantations.

But as for the whole getting-Q-his-Shade-back-so-that-Eliot-and-Julia-don't-have-to-watch-him-die-again thing? Zilch. Nada. Nolla. Zip.

What they _do_ keep finding are more and more tales about psychotically murderous niffins tearing people apart for fun, or suffocating them, or burning them to death. For every story of a monk mourning their fallen brother, there's another describing in vivid detail how attempts to save them resulted in the deaths of the entire monastery.

Penny and Kady's jaws get tenser with every book they pick up. Julia starts to look like a stiff breeze could knock her over; they pretend they don't hear her crying in the dark after the midnight castings or notice that Penny will more often than not stay up with her.

The problem is, Alice seems to have been the only success story since written records began. And even disregarding the fact that Mayakovsky's spell only works with the power of a hundred Master Magicians, the metamath only adds up if a Shade is involved.

A Shade they can't get.

They can get to the Underworld easily enough; they're pros at that by now. But the fact remains that you can only leave with the same number of Shades you sneaked in with and having someone remove their Shade to provide transport is just shifting the problem. Admittedly, that person is not exactly going to be able to teleport at will like Quentin can (with the exception of Penny, who isn't exactly prime candidate for volunteering anyway), which would decrease the most immediate danger, but no one wants to risk another Martin Chatwin or tree genocide if they can't find a way to restore that lost Shade in the end. 

Penny also had several strong words about 'people messing around with Shades and thinking they can just solve the problem later' but again, Eliot has a sneaking suspicion that he doesn't want to know exactly what went down in Timeline 23.

The month is nearly up when Margo corners him in the bathroom. It takes just one look at her face to tell him that he doesn't want to hear what she has to say.

"No." He spits, drying his hands and turning to point a finger at her. "I refuse."

"You don't even know what I'm going to say."

"Everyone's decided that they need to kill Q and you've volunteered yourself as messenger girl."

"Okay," Margo holds up her hands, leaning back against the doorframe. "So apparently you do know."

Turning back to the mirror, Eliot inspects an imaginary blemish on his cheek.

"So much for trying our damnedest to save him." He says bitterly.

"That's not fair."

"Tell that to Q."

"What, you think these past few weeks have been all pretend? We've _looked_ , El. There's nothing. Penny even travelled to Brakebills with Julia and hit the Dean up. He said it's impossible."

" _Fillory_ was impossible. _Getting magic back_ was impossible. The impossible's become the everyday for us." Eliot points out. He watches the reflection of Margo shift, hating the way he knows exactly what she's going to say as soon as she bites her lip.

"Not like this. I don't think we can save him this time."

"There's a way. We just haven't found it yet."

"El..."

" _Bambi_. You know I'm right. Julia says that Q found the god trapping spell in a ceramic _bear_ of all places..."

"And look what happened to him." Margo snarls.

The corner of the mirror splinters, vicious cracks spiderwebbing their way into nothingness. Eliot flinches and steps back, pretending that mirror Margo's gaze isn't knowing and heartbroken all at the same time.

"There isn't a way we can get him back without trading his life for someone else's. And we both know exactly how Quentin would feel about that."

Yeah. Probably pretty much exactly how Eliot feels about Quentin trading his life for Eliot's.

Wake up. _Quentin died for me_. Go to sleep. _Quentin died for me_. Every moment in between: _Quentin died for me_.

"We've exhausted every possibility, El. What we need now is some fucking closure."

"Closure."

"The longer this drags out, the more it looks like Julia is going to throw herself off a bridge. And quite frankly you're not looking too hot yourself." 

Eliot scrubs a hand over his face, turning to look wearily at Margo.

"You don't know what you're asking of me."

"You cared about him. I get it. But we..."

"I loved him, Bambi." The words hang there, glittering and vulnerable. Eliot tries not to think about how it's the first time he's ever said it out loud. "I still do."

"Shit." Margo whispers. Her eyes are wide. "I knew you wanted to bang him, but..."

"The mosaic timeline. We somehow remembered pieces of it, these beautiful pieces, and we loved each other for a really, really long time. We had a _family_ together."

"Fuck, El." Margo breathes, stumbling over. Eliot accepts her embrace, clinging to her without shame.

"So you know, Quentin being Quentin he put his heart out there and asked if I wanted to give it a go in this timeline. And of course, me being me, I promptly told him to fuck off in the most patronising way possible and then I lost him."

 _And then he died for me_.

Eliot remembers Quentin again, small and exposed on the steps as he miserably curled into himself. How much would have changed if Eliot had been just that little bit less of a coward then? Would Quentin have still tried to sign himself up to an eternity as the Monster's plaything? Would they have got out of the castle before Fogg and the others showed up and the Monster was able to escape?

"I didn't _know_." Margo squeezes him tightly, fingers bunching in the fabric of Eliot's waistcoat as if she doesn't know exactly how long it will take Eliot to get the creases out later. "Shit, El, why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to pretend it never happened. I knew I'd just destroyed something real."

" _Fuck_." Margo lets out a shaky laugh, voice choked with emotion. "You guys would have been the worst. PDA all over the place."

Eliot thinks about how many times they got sidetracked whilst laying the mosaic and snorts.

"The absolute worst." He agrees.

"I mean, Jesus. You guys could barely keep your hands off each other when you weren't fucking. We'd have had to pry you apart with a crowbar."

"At the very least. Q is delightfully clingy when he's horny."

 _Or he was_ , Eliot thinks bitterly to himself, and any building mirth evaporates instantly. Margo senses it, tightening her grip and pressing his face into her neck.

"I'm sorry, El. I truly am." She murmurs. "But it doesn't change the fact that there's nothing we can do."

Eliot doesn't answer. He knows, deep down, that she's right.

"It's not like we're going to summon him or anything." Margo continues, speaking quickly and persuasively. "But we're going to box him the moment he shows himself again. He's too dangerous to let run around if there's no hope of saving him."

"I can't..." He begins haltingly. Margo shushes him.

"No one's expecting you to. Or Julia. The rest of us will do it, if it comes down to that."

Eliot trembles even as he nods, feeling somehow like he's just killed Quentin all over again. He may not be the one holding the box, but he's still equally guilty of giving the others his blessing to do it.

* * *

Except it doesn't come down to that. Because Quentin doesn't appear again.

Even when they slowly start to venture out of the apartment, niffin boxes at the ready, there's no sign of him.

Quentin is gone.

* * *

It's been eight weeks ( _three days, twelve hours_ ) since Quentin burned before his eyes and Eliot is...coping.

Sure, his alcohol intake has upped itself considerably, but he's nowhere near Mike-levels of self-destruction, which Eliot can only count as a blessing. That's more to do with Margo than him, her eagle eyes immediately spotting any sign of Eliot cracking and promptly swooping in to usher him off on some grand new shopping adventure. His wardrobe has never been so fabulous. It's like she's trying to head the worst off before Eliot gets too far down the rabbit hole, the way she wasn't able to when the whole Mike fiasco went down while she was gone.

It's working, too; bit by bit, the pain starts to dull, the sharp edges of his grief beginning to cut only when he thinks about Quentin's death rather than all the time. Which, okay, is still most of the time, but every little helps. It's not even the shopping really that helps: it's Margo's solid presence at his side, the way she links her arm through his and leans close to whisper scathing comments about the other customers in the store. Sometimes she'll bully him into visiting newly opened art exhibitions as well, or occasionally demand that he escort her to an Off-Off-Broadway show that she simply must watch. Funnily enough, the exhibitions and shows are all things that are right up Eliot's alley.

Margo claims it's a coincidence. Eliot can see right through her.

She's starting to talk about Fillory more and more, however, and Eliot wonders how much longer he can keep her from her throne. As much as he trusts Fen, it sounds like Fillory is on the verge of war and he knows it must be killing Margo to not be there.

If she asks, he'll go with her – there's nothing left for him here, after all. But three's company and he's seen the looks she and Josh have been throwing each other when they're not sneaking off together. He has no desire to get in the middle of _that_. He'll have to see if he can corrupt Fen into becoming his new drinking partner. Or maybe Rafe. The man is so tense and buttoned-up that he'll probably make a hilarious drunk.

Julia has been doing better as well. Margo was right – she needed closure – and the decision to stop researching ways to save Quentin has given her the chance to focus on something other than the loss of her best friend. She and Penny have been looking into ways to get her magic back, and though nothing has come to light yet there are certainly sparks of a different sort starting to fly. Eliot gives it two more weeks before Julia admits she's developing feelings for this new Penny.

Kady is...somewhere. If he's honest, he has no clue what she's been up to and suspects she probably prefers it that way.

Their little group is starting to fracture, the glue that held them together long lost to the fire. Without a common cause they're drifting apart: Eliot suspects they'd have already split if it weren't for the fact that no one wants to give up living in such a stupidly expensive penthouse apartment rent-free.

Eliot doesn't think he's ever slept in a bed this nice in his entire life and he was High King.

Rolling out of said bed, he carefully selects a flowy navy and olive-green ensemble – one has to look their best for day drinking, after all – and slips it on, feeling closer to his old self with every slip of a button and click of a clasp.

A few more minutes styling his hair and he's ready to face the day, throwing the curtains back in a forceful manner worthy of any teen movie opening. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and Eliot is ready to let Margo drag him statue hopping in Central Park.

And then he sees it.

Despite the warm temperatures outside, his window has misted up. Unusual, but no particular cause for concern.

The message, however, very much is.

MISS ME? The words read, slightly sloppy in their presentation. There's a smiley face underneath it, equally wonky.

Eliot stares at it, his heart starting up a frantic drumming in his chest. The words are magic. There's no doubt about it - there's no way that anyone could have written those words on his window at this height – but that just means someone was intentionally trying to reach Eliot in particular, which is a fairly disturbing idea.

He doesn't think any of the others would do it. It lacks the drama and class Margo requires in her pranks, while Kady and Penny-23 would most likely see such juvenile things as beneath them. It's possibly not too off-brand for Julia, but she has much bigger things to worry about at the moment. Josh knows his life wouldn't be worth living if he took Eliot on.

He doesn't even spare a thought for Brakebills. They have no need for window messages: if they want to speak to you, they simply shove a portal in your path or throw paper at you until you stumble onto campus.

For one horrible, frightening moment, Eliot wonders if it's the Monster. It's exactly the type of irreverent, childish humour that he was fond of, based on Julia and Penny's tales of survival. Yet the Monster is currently trapped within the glowing yellow orb that none of them are particularly sure what to do with. Last he saw it, Julia was using it as a paperweight.

And besides, the smiley face reminds him of something else. Something distant and faded from long ago. He scrunches his brow, trying desperately to remember.

* * *

_It's the worst winter Fillory has given them yet, but Eliot is snug and warm inside the cottage. The warmth of the kitchen fire is more than enough to heat the building through and if the temperatures drop any further tonight they can just throw more blankets on the bed. Although he's sure that he can find more enjoyable ways of keeping Quentin and himself warm._

_Eliot smirks, returning to rolling out the pastry dough for tonight's plum pie. There'll be time enough for such things later, when the chores are done and they can relax. For now, he'd better focus on the matter at hand._

_He's just beginning to trim the excess pastry when there's a knock at the window. Looking up, Eliot feels his face split into a wide grin at the sight of Quentin, nose red from the cold and hair damp from snow. He's trying his hardest to wave at Eliot, even with his arms full of firewood, and Eliot is completely unsurprised when the sticks go flying, shortly followed by Q as he attempts to catch them._

_Useless, adorable man._

_He's still laughing when Quentin reappears at the window, lips pulled into a pout so lovely that it should quite frankly be illegal. He's frowning, but in that exaggerated way he always does when they're playing at being mad at each other._

_Eliot holds his hands up in the universal sign for 'what can you do?' and blows him a kiss before turning back to his pie. He's barely started when there's another knock and he looks up to see Quentin breathing hot air onto the window, brow furrowed in concentration as he slowly writes a message onto the fogged-up glass._

_Quentin's clearly struggling with writing backwards – the letters are wobbly and look more like the work of a pre-schooler than a full-grown man – but he's so obviously pleased with himself as he finishes his message off that Eliot can't help melting a little inside. He looks at the 'MISS ME?' above the crooked smiley face and feels his heart give a pang because he_ did _. Quentin's been gone since sun-up this morning and Eliot has spent the day pining over his absence._

_Gods, what has this man done to him?_

_He rolls his eyes and nods, biting his lip when Quentin glows in response. Anyone would think they haven't spent the past year and a half fucking like rabbits, the way that Q positively lights up every time Eliot even hints at wanting him to stick around. It's seriously unhealthy, mainly because it makes Eliot want to bundle him up in their blankets and pamper him until he realises exactly how precious he is to Eliot._

_Forcing down the standard squishy feelings that come from being around Quentin Coldwater for any length of time, Eliot mimes that the firewood needs picking up and laughs when Quentin huffs and stomps off like the spoiled brat he is._

_He's almost finished dressing the pie when the door opens and a cold nose presses against the nape of his neck._

_"Miss me?" Quentin murmurs, sliding his arms around Eliot's waist. Eliot smiles and settles back against his chest, mentally saying goodbye to any chance of having the pie ready for tonight._

_"Always." He promises._

* * *

Eliot stretches out and traces the message with trembling fingers, breath catching as he takes in the uneven lettering with fresh understanding.

"Q?" He chokes out, pressing his hand flat against the glass. For an instant there's nothing. And then, unmistakably, the glass beneath his hand suddenly pulses with heat.

"El, you up yet? I want to get an early start before the tourists all..." Margo bursts in, still putting her earrings in and with her dress only partly done-up. She trails off, frowning as she takes in Eliot's position. 

"Eliot?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing?" She slowly asks. Eliot blinks, turning his head to look at her. It feels like he's swimming through Jell-O.

"Bambi."

"Eliot." She looks suspicious now, worry starting to spark in those big eyes of hers. "Are you high?"

"No, I was just..." He looks back to the window. The message is gone, the glass cool and clean beneath his hand.

"...taking in the view." He finishes lamely. Margo raises her eyebrows, clearly not buying it.

"Riiight. Maybe we should stay home today. I'm sure Netflix has something we can..."

"I'm fine. Really. I'm just...having a morning. Nothing that a bit of fresh air won't solve." Eliot reassures her. He gestures down at his clothes. "Look, I even put on my best perambulatory outfit for the occasion."

Margo crosses her arms, visibly sceptical.

"Can you see any lizard men in the general vicinity? Are pink elephants raining down from the ceiling?"

"If there are, I'm sadly missing out." Eliot smiles winningly. Margo sighs, uncrossing her arms and resting her hands on her hips.

"Well, if you're sober you need to get over here and help me lace my dress up. I tried getting Josh to do it, but he's useless with anything more complicated than a zipper."

"I honestly don't know what you see in him, Bambi, I really don't." Eliot chastises, gliding over. Margo rolls her eyes, turning around to present her back.

"What can I say? He's eager to please."

Eliot hums, experienced fingers making quick work of the complicated fastenings.

"Whatever you say."

"Shut up."

"I'm sure he's positively _thrilling_ in bed."

"For the love of clit, shut the fuck up." Margo bites out, but the smirk she throws over her shoulder shows that she's not really annoyed.

Dress duly done up, Margo swans out to find suitable footwear for their excursion, making dire threats as to what she's going to do to Eliot's cravat collection if he doesn't join her in five minutes. Not one to tempt fate, he quickly locates his ankle jackboots and slips them on. Grabbing his jacket, he hovers in the doorway, glancing back at the window.

For the barest of instants, he thinks he can see a flash of crackling blue there. But when he turns to look properly there's nothing except the grey of New York concrete and the tantalising azure of a clear springtime sky.

"El-i-ot!" Margo hollers from the main living area. He groans, rubbing despairingly at his eyes.

"Am I hallucinating?" He asks softly. Looking back at the window one last time, he double-takes, cursing.

The smiley face is back. But the message has changed.

IF YOU WERE, HOW WOULD ASKING ME HELP?


	3. Chapter 3

Whenever he watched horror films, Eliot always despaired of the characters. Like so many others before him, Eliot used to throw his hands up in furious disbelief, hollering at how ridiculous all of the characters were and feeling justified when they shortly died bloody, painful deaths because of their own stupidity.

But the thing is, Eliot kind of understands them a bit better now. Because he hasn't told anyone about the messages.

He knows it's absurd – the last time they saw Quentin, he didn't exactly present himself as the poster child for calm and rational companions – but he can't help it. The moment Penny and the others find out that Quentin is hanging around in some form, out the niffin boxes will come and it will be bye-bye Q.

The problem is that Eliot's not ready for that. And sure, maybe it makes him the aging suburban housewife who loves her husband so much that she won't leave him and ends up dying horribly in Act 2 when the monster he's become turns round and kills her.

(Okay. Eliot might have spent some time thinking about this particular situation recently.)

But still, he couldn't bring himself to tell Margo about the messages. Even when she kept shooting him worried looks and strongly insinuating that she knew he was hiding something from her he'd kept schtum, simply patting her on the hand and pointing towards their next destination because _look, Bambi, squirrels! That one has bigger balls than you do!_

Even in the days since, he's been unable to find the willpower required to throw Quentin under the bus. Margo's gone beyond suspicious by this point; she keeps pointedly wandering into his room to talk to him, rifling through his drawers to check for something she's supposedly lost. She's even got Josh in on it, frequently getting the other man to keep Eliot in the kitchen with fumblingly transparent attempts at distracting him while she searches for Elliot's stash.

It's starting to wear a bit thin, in all honesty. There's only so many times a man can listen to the five steps needed to make a perfect gooey butter cake. But the alternative is explaining to Margo exactly what's got him acting so shiftily these days and that's something that Eliot just can't bring himself to do.

The fact that the messages have kept coming is probably something he should be sharing, admittedly. As well as the fact that the last few times he's ventured outside the apartment he's sure he caught glimpses of someone following him from the corner of his eye. Yesterday he even glanced up at the mirror behind the coffee shop counter and saw Q staring back at him, though when he looked around there was no one there except the usual suited miseries on their lunch breaks.

It's just that, as creepy and stalker-like as it all should be, Eliot can't help feeling...comforted, in some small way. None of Quentin's window messages have been threatening – they've all been nostalgic throwbacks to their past, little echoes of conversations and moments lost to the passage of time. Yesterday Eliot had woken up to the world's worst drawing of a rose, a reference to the time Quentin had decided that their next mosaic design should branch off into flowers.

* * *

_"A rose, Quentin? Really? I knew you were a romantic, but even you can't think that the beauty of all life is an overpriced plant sold to desperate boyfriends."_

_"It's a metaphor, isn't it? All...all those layers, and the thorns, and the..."_

_"You have no idea what you're arguing, do you?"_

_"They're just pretty! What's wrong with that?"_

_"Oh, Q. If you wanted flowers for our anniversary you should have said."_

_"Fuck off, Eliot."_

_"Language. You'll give Teddy ideas."_

* * *

A few days before that the lyrics to '(I've Had) The Time of My Life' had been painted onto his window, making Eliot chuckle as he remembered chasing Quentin around the Cottage during a party and scooping his unwilling victim into a passable salsa.

* * *

_"What the...no! Eliot, there's no way..."_

_"Come on, Q. Dance with me."_

_"I don't know the steps."_

_"Don't worry. I'll be your Swayze."_

_"I have no idea what that means."_

_"Just move your hips a bit more. See? You're doing fine."_

_"El..."_

_"Shhhh. Help Daddy fulfil his fantasy."_

* * *

Today's message, however, sends a pang through Eliot when he pulls back the curtains and reads it.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE HERE.

He presses his hand against the glass, sighing when he finds it cold to the touch again. Just like it has been since the first message appeared.

"Really, Q?" He murmurs, leaning forward to press his forehead against the cool glass. "Because it's sure starting to feel like it. As much as I enjoy these trips down memory lane, I'd much rather talk to you."

He closes his eyes, willing his words into the ether. He just wants to hear Quentin's voice again. He wants to see that furrowed brow and be able to reach out and smooth away the wrinkles forming there.

He wants Q, damn it.

"Please." He whispers. "I just need a sign. Are you really here?"

The glass stays cold. He opens his eyes; no one's there.

"Why won't you talk to me?" Eliot pleads, slapping his hands lightly against the glass in his frustration. "Does this all mean anything to you, or is this just you trying to hurt me?"

The message melts away as if it were never there.

No other reply comes. 

* * *

It's three days later when everything changes. There have been no new messages since Eliot's mini-breakdown the other day – not that Eliot has been looking for them multiple times a day, or anything – and Margo's patience with him has run out.

"I don't know what's been going on with you these past few weeks, besides the obvious." She says sternly, positioning herself in his direct line of sight. "But I am going to get to the bottom of it. Tomorrow morning, you and I are getting brunch. And you are going to open the fuck up."

She's glaring at him, the depth of her scowl only heightened as she mercilessly pulls her hair back into the highest of ponytails. The effect is...significant. Even Eliot, after all these years, wants to quail at the sight of it.

"Mimosas?" He offers, shooting her his most winning smile. She huffs, rolling her eyes.

" _Yes_ , mimosas. What are we, animals?"

"Well, I suppose now that you've done the deed with Hoberman..."

"Yeah, yeah. Always the smart guy."

"Speaking of which, he does realise that it's a cardinal sin being late to a date when you both share an apartment, right?"

"Relax." Margo says, checking her make-up in the mirror. "He's been trained well."

As if on cue, the apartment door slams and Josh streaks past Margo's bedroom.

"SorrythesubwaywascrazybusyI'llbereadyinafewminutespleasedon'tyellatme!" He calls, vanishing into his own room. Margo smirks, bending down to lace up her boots.

"Like I said. He's been trained well."

True to his word, Josh emerges a few minutes later, flushed and panting and sporting a blazer over what Eliot suspects must be the nicest jeans his owns. Margo hums critically, flicking her fingers through his hair.

"You'll do." She finally decides. Josh shakes his head fondly, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her close.

"Be still my beating heart." He deadpans. Margo grins, pulling him in for a kiss.

Ugh. And she had the nerve to talk about how much PDA he and Quentin would have engaged in.

By the time the pair finally come up for air Eliot has wandered out into the living space and is perusing the sole bookcase not being used to house Marina's collection of spellbooks.

"We're off then." Josh announces. Eliot gestures discreetly at his mouth and Josh blushes, rubbing frantically at the lipstick Margo has left behind.

"Enjoy the restaurant. Make sure you get a window seat – I want a full report of all of New York's weirdest and wackiest when you get back." Eliot orders.

"Sure, but I can't promise we'll be focused on people watching." Margo grins wickedly, waggling her eyebrows. Eliot shudders dramatically.

"Gross, Bambi." She winks at him before pausing and looking serious.

"Are you going to be alright by yourself? I'm not sure when the other three will get back."

Julia and Penny have gone to visit some temple in the wilds of Nepal and Kady has gone with them to provide back-up. Eliot is sure it is exactly as awkward as it sounds.

"I'll be _fine_. Go and enjoy yourselves. Just not _too_ much."

Sticking out her tongue, Margo waves and grabs Josh by the collar, tugging him out. The door clicks shut and Eliot is suddenly alone in the apartment for the first time since...well. For the first time.

When six people with no jobs share an apartment, alone time is a rarity. Add to that Margo's slightly overzealous attempts at protecting him and it's perhaps unsurprising that the only significant amount of time Eliot has had to himself in recent months has been his daily coffee run.

Truth be told, Eliot is quite looking forward to this. There once was a time that he was fundamentally incapable of spending an evening in solitude, much preferring the roar of a party and easy pleasure of that night's hook-up to the horror of being left alone with his thoughts. After all the chaos of the past few years, however, he feels the time for a quiet night in is long overdue.

The old Eliot would be spinning in his brogues.

Scanning the spines of the books in front of him, Eliot pauses as his eyes fall on a very familiar series.

They're not Quentin's nicest set – those are presumably in Q's bedroom, which no one has been brave enough to clear out just yet – but they're still weighty, their painted dust jackets positively _screaming_ 1970s kitsch. For a moment, Eliot considers taking the opportunity to re-read the series; he's not actually read through the books for anything other than research purposes and it might be nice to try and lose himself in this version of the world that so captured Quentin, Julia and Margo's childhoods.

In the end he chickens out, letting his hand slip down to the collection of pulpy romance novels someone's been growing on the bottom shelf. He has no idea who they belong to, but he hopes it's Kady – the girl definitely needs some form of escapism from the shitshow that her love life has become.

Seeing as the good weather has continued, Eliot decides to make an evening of it on the apartment balcony. Grabbing a bottle of wine with his free hand and a glass with his telekinesis, he makes his way across the room to the sliding door only to drop everything with a crash as soon as he clocks exactly what he's seeing.

Quentin is there. Perched on the balcony railing and waving cheerfully at him as if the last time Eliot saw him properly wasn't when he was tormenting the people he'd once called friends.

Eliot stumbles closer, his hand already on the door handle before he thinks better of it and pulls away. Quentin notices, his mouth turning down.

"Won't you come outside?" His voice is slightly muffled by the glass, but carries through clearly enough. Eliot swallows and shakes his head.

"What, and let you burn my face off or throw me over the side?"

Quentin pouts, sliding off the railing and sauntering closer to the door.

"I'd never."

"So you say."

"Eliot." Quentin ducks his head, staring earnestly up at Eliot through his eyelashes and making Eliot flinch at the familiar gesture. "I wouldn't."

"Still. Better to be safe than sorry, wouldn't you agree?" Eliot says faux-casually. Quentin sighs, sliding his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels.

"I suppose. It's not exactly like I have a choice, do I?"

He jerks his head wryly at the warded glass, the displeased twist to his mouth loudly proclaiming without words exactly how he feels about it.

"Can you blame us after what you did last time?"

Quentin grins. It's wicked, and mischievous, and Eliot hates it immediately because it makes Quentin look ridiculously young.

"I guess not. People get so _sensitive_ when they think they're being mocked."

Something about the way Quentin says 'people' fills Eliot with foreboding.

"Quentin..." He says slowly, praying desperately for a denial. "Have you...been to see anyone else?"

"Just my mother."

" _Christ_." Eliot turns away, grinding the heels of his hands into his forehead. Margo and the others had been right all along; Quentin really is too dangerous to allow him to wander freely. Eliot should have said something about the messages sooner: what if she's dead? Quentin may have had a rocky relationship with his mother, but he would never have dreamed of physically hurting her before. And now Eliot's responsible for letting him potentially attempt matricide.

"What's wrong? You're acting like I... _oh_." Quentin laughs. "Turn around, Eliot. It's not what you think."

Eliot stays facing away, mind racing a mile a minute. He's frantically trying to remember if he knows where Quentin's mother lives when Quentin starts knocking on the glass.

"Turn around, Eliot." He sounds almost kind. "I swear to you, she's fine."

Slowly, Eliot twists to face him, lowering his hands and looking Quentin dead in the eye.

"Fine as in functioning perfectly on all levels, or fine as in you left her able to breathe?"

"Functioning perfectly. Well, as perfectly as she can be now that her girlfriend's walked out on her."

"You...broke up your mother's relationship?"

"She always did say that I broke things." Quentin muses, shrugging. "It was so easy – all I had to do was leave a few incriminating items lying around and crack a few ornaments after Molly had friends over. Once they started screaming at each other they just didn't stop."

"But _why_?"

"I don't know. I might have been punishing her for walking out on our family, but in all honesty I think I was just bored. It was a way to fill an afternoon."

So. Needlessly cruel and malicious, but not actually violent this time. Small mercies.

"You know, this isn't exactly how I pictured this conversation going after what you said before." Quentin says dryly. Eliot blinks.

"What?"

"Oh, come _on_. 'As much as I enjoy these trips down memory lane, I'd much rather talk to you.' 'I just need a sign.' 'Why won't you talk to me?' Ringing any bells here?"

Eliot stares at him, blood roaring in his ears.

"You were there."

"Of course I was there. How else did you think the notes were appearing?"

"You were there, listening to me, and you didn't think to _show yourself_? _To say_ _something_?"

"I had things to do that day. You know how it is – worlds to explore, forces to manipulate. It's not like it was anything serious."

He can't believe it. There he was, pouring his heart out, and Quentin had just been on the other side of the glass, listening. To him, Eliot's sudden wave of grief had been as insignificant as the splash of a pebble in an ocean.

"You can't seriously be angry with me. I'm here now, aren't I?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Eliot sneers, stepping closer to the glass. "I wasn't aware that I should be down on bended knee, grateful that you finally decided to grace us with your divine presence."

"Not 'us'. You. Just you, Eliot."

Eliot shudders, the wind abruptly going out of his sails.

"You can't _say that_ , Q." He says weakly. He fumbles a hand forward, leaning against the door for support. "Not when I...when I..."

A sudden warmth floods his hand and he looks up to see that Quentin has moved closer too. His hand is pressed flat against the door in such a way that their hands would be touching were it not for the glass between them. As Eliot watches, blue sparks out of Quentin's fingers and he feels the answering heat through the pane immediately.

"I've liked leaving messages for you." Quentin murmurs. He places a second hand on the glass and Eliot mirrors him, shuddering at the instant rush of heat he feels the moment their hands line up.

"Q..." The touch feels careful, intimate. The gentle warmth emanating from Quentin's palms is a million miles from the searing heat that scorched Julia's flesh all those weeks ago. How can this be the same creature that terrorised them so that night? How can Quentin show such a complete lack of empathy in one breath and then speak so sweetly with the second?

"I heard you say my name that day. When I burnt up. I thought something had gone wrong, so I had to check on you."

"I'm fine. I'm fine, Q. But you...what that spell did to you..."

"I don't regret it, you know."

"You don't?" Eliot sways closer, his eyes drifting shut. If the glass wasn't between them they'd be close enough to kiss now.

"Of course not." Quentin's voice is soft, mellifluous. It makes Eliot want to sink into it and make himself at home. "Look at me. I can do whatever I want now. I have so much _power_." 

It's like someone dumped a bucket of cold water over him. Eliot's eyes fly open and he stumbles back, ripping his hands away from the soothing heat of the glass. Quentin never would have said anything like that before. He's never craved power, at least not just for its own merit.

"I've made you angry again." Quentin sighs. He doesn't sound particularly regretful; if anything, there's a thread of irritation running through the words this time. "Stop being so _touchy_. You're being grumpy and it's boring."

"What are you doing here, Q?" Eliot asks wearily, rubbing at his face. He feels like he's aged 100 years just over the course of this tumultuous conversation; it's like he's standing on dangerously shifting sands, unable to find his balance and on the verge of toppling over into the void at any given moment. 

"I came to see you because you said you wanted to talk."

"Is that really all?"

"Yes. Oh, and to tell you that you're being followed."

"Sure, by you."

"No. Well, a few times, just to see where you'd gone. But mainly someone else."

Eliot freezes. Instantly, his mind starts calculating who it could be. The McAllisters? A victim of the Monster, out to seek revenge? Who else have they angered during their adventures? The list must be huge by now.

"Who?" He demands. Quentin opens his mouth, only to cock his head to the side and vanish without warning. Eliot is confused until Penny-23, Julia and Kady suddenly blip into existence beside him smelling strongly of incense and faintly of animal urine.

"What are you looking at, Waugh?" Penny snarls. He's even more irritable than usual and Eliot immediately pinpoints him as the likely source of the urine smell. There's straw caught in his hair and a suspicious stain on his shirt. Kady and Julia, in contrast, look as fresh and lovely as they did when they left.

Eliot shrugs, shooting a glance at the balcony to check that Quentin hasn't reappeared.

"A victim of goat watersports, it would appear. Any success with the goddess powers?"

"Nothing. The guy who ran the temple was completely nuts. He just kept rambling about us needing to find the right folder." Julia says glumly. "At least, I think that's what he said. His English wasn't very good."

"He said something about a joiner, at one point." Kady offers. "And then...sealant?"

"Point is, he knew nothing. It was just a big waste of our time." Penny says sourly.

"That's a shame. Still, at least you can cross him off your list now."

"Mmmm, my incredibly long list of solutions that has _definitely_ proved useful." Pausing, Julia frowns down at the wreckage surrounding Eliot.

"What happened here?"

"Oh, you know me. So clumsy. I was just about to clear it up when you arrived." Eliot lies. He starts to gather the pieces of glass up, wincing as he spots the wine-soaked ruins of the romance novel. Suddenly he very much hopes that it _doesn't_ belong to Kady.

He shoots a look upwards, trying to gauge her response, but her face isn't giving anything away. Eliot makes a mental note to lock his door tonight just in case.

"Whatever, dude. I'm going to take a shower." Penny grumbles, stomping off. Kady shrugs, flipping her hair back over her shoulder.

"I'm craving pizza. You guys in?"

Eliot shakes his head. Julia nods, though her eyes don't leave Eliot.

"Sure. Get me a veggie deluxe."

"Heathen."

"Bite me."

"In your dreams, bitch." Kady calls back over her shoulder as she leaves to make the order. Julia waits until she's gone before clearing her throat awkwardly.

"Not you too." Eliot groans, pausing in his tidying to roll his eyes. "Margo's already breathing down my neck."

"She's worried about you. We all are."

"I'm fine."

"Margo thinks you're taking drugs."

"Well, Bambi can go suck an egg. The only person doing drugs in this apartment is her boo."

"Is that what this is about? Josh?"

Eliot blinks, genuinely stunned at the question.

"Josh?" He asks incredulously. "You seriously think I'm getting bent out of shape because of _Josh_?"

The sheer idea is ludicrous. What he and Bambi have is forever; even if Josh turns out to be the love of her life, or some bullshit like that, he knows there will always be a place for him at her side. And besides, there are far worse people for her to hook-up with than a Naturalist who likes to dabble in the kitchen.

"Oh." Julia's face crumples and she kneels down beside him, covering one of his hands with her own. "You can always talk to me, you know. I miss him too."

For a moment, Eliot considers telling her everything. She's known Quentin for decades and was just as broken by his death as Eliot; even now, almost three months on and with her focus shifted firmly to her quest for magic, Eliot still catches her looking sad and quiet sometimes.

Then he remembers that she agreed with the others about the need to box Q and changes his mind. Maybe she wasn't the first person to jump on-board the 'Let's kill what's left of Quentin' train, but she most certainly wasn't the last. Eliot can't trust her with this.

"I just wish I was as brave as you." Eliot improvises, hating himself slightly when Julia's eyes begin to dampen. "I just keep sliding backwards while you're starting to move on with your life."

"It'll come, Eliot. You think it's easy for me? 50 Cent came up on my playlist the other day and I nearly bawled the apartment down."

Which is...unexpected? His confusion must show on his face because Julia snorts, laughing at herself.

"'Ayo Technology'. We made up this _terrible_ dance to it in 10th grade. Lots of unnecessary hip thrusting and grunting."

Now that has got to be the most painfully adorable thing Eliot can imagine. He takes a moment to picture teenage Quentin and Julia laughing together in one of their bedrooms, legs tangling and threatening to trip them as they stumble through their routine over and over again until they perfect it. He wishes he could have met that Quentin.

Dropping his pile of shards into the bin, Eliot summons the sodden remains of the romance novel over and dumps them as well. He belatedly realises that he probably should have made a note of the title so that he can replace it, but can't quite bring himself to go foraging for it even with his powers. Josh has been experimenting with new cookie recipes this week and Eliot has no desire to expose himself to whatever strange materials have made their way into the waste.

"My point is, Eliot, that you'll get there. We all will. But you can't just bottle it up." Julia finishes. Eliot regrets his choice of diversionary topic immediately: if he's not careful, Julia's going to insist that they hold each other and cry out their emotions. At least Margo provides alcohol when forcing him to spill.

"Thank you. I guess I've just got to keep powering through." Eliot says, smiling awkwardly when Julia grabs him by the hand and nods.

Over her shoulder, Quentin flickers back into view. He puts a finger to his lips and smirks, vanishing.

* * *

"So Julia tells me that you feel like you're 'sliding backwards'."

Fucking Julia.

Eliot leans back in his chair and scowls, any joy garnered from the beautifully sunny morning and the bright fizz of their mimosas abruptly draining away.

"Julia has a big mouth."

"Oh, relax. You think I can't tell when something's up with you? You were starting to do better until we went for that walk in Central Park. And then you went all squirrelly on me."

"You got me. That picture of you and me riding Balto pushed me over the edge. It was just too much."

"Shut up." Shooting him a withering look, Margo leans out of the way of the server as her acai bowl arrives. She doesn't even wait for Eliot's food before grabbing for her spoon, though there is one dangerous moment where it looks more like she's considering disembowelling him with it. "I've let you get away with this long enough – you're going to tell me what's going on with you, I'm going to offer witty yet heartfelt commentary, then we're going to solve it. Capiche?"

Maybe Eliot should have gone with the Josh theory last night. It would have given him something to work with here; as it is, Eliot stuck between the equally unappealing choices of telling the truth about Quentin's visits or raking his heart over the coals again and breaking down over brunch like a divorced yoga mother of two.

"Scrambled egg tacos?" Their server reappears with Eliot's order, sliding the plate onto the table and scurrying away before Eliot can even thank him. Eliot watches him rush off with his notepad in hand and feels a sudden wave of relief that it's not him trying to single-handedly serve all the hungry New Yorkers who've turned out this morning. The tiny restaurant is rammed, with each seat filled and a small queue of people outside. Margo had had to use a mixture of flirtation and threats just to get them through the door earlier.

Of course, Eliot muses, casting a sceptical eye over his fellow diners, it doesn't help that the family of four in the corner are eking out their breakfast for all that they're worth: the father is painstakingly clearing his plate of every last splatter of sauce and the mother is taking the world's tiniest sips of her smoothie in a blatant attempt to delay having to take their restless children out for the day. And even _their_ table-squatting is put to shame by the two separate pairs of grey-suited office workers sat quietly enjoying cups of coffee that they could have easily had at home.

Wait.

Eliot's eyes widen.

"Bambi!" He hisses, swinging back round and grabbing her hand. "We're being watched."

Margo narrows her eyes, jerking her hand free and taking a defiant gulp of her mimosa.

"I'm getting real sick of your avoidance tactics, El. It's not doing either of us any favours."

"I'm serious. There are two pairs of suits in here."

"And? It's not a crime to take a break from work." She drawls. Eliot shakes his head wildly, leaning forward.

"It's Sunday morning and we're in _the Lower East Side_."

Margo's eyes fly open. "Fuck. You think...?"

"That the Library is tailing us? Definitely."

"Shit. Finish your tacos – _slowly_ – and let's get the hell out of dodge."

They eat the rest of their food in tense silence, chucking a few notes on the table and edging their way out past the other customers. Once they're out, Margo hooks her arm through Eliot's and rests her head on his shoulder, forcing him to slow his anxious march to a more meandering pace.

"Are they following us?" She asks out of the corner of her mouth a block later. Eliot surreptitiously stretches and glances back over her head, grimacing as he spots two blobs of grey bobbing and weaving through the crowds behind them.

"Yup." Now that he knows what he's looking for, he can't believe that he ever thought it might be Q following him; the Librarians aren't even making any attempt to hide their movements, most likely used to their bland outfits allowing them to fade into the background.

"Okay. Stay calm. Try and act as if you have no idea you're being stalked."

"What do we do? We can't lead them back to the apartment!" Eliot feels slightly hysterical. His mind has been firing on all things Quentin these past few weeks – he doesn't think he's got the processing power to cope with yet another spanner in the works.

Margo purses her lips, eyes flicking side to side as she assesses their options. "Let's think this through: do you honestly think this is the first time we've had Librarians tailing us?"

"No."

"Then they probably already know exactly where we live. If we stay out here, we're sitting ducks. The apartment's wards will keep them out and we'll have the others as back-up."

"Right. That's...logical." Thank God for his Bambi and her ruthlessly strategic brain.

The Librarians stick with them the entire way back, even following them onto the train. Eliot can feel their eyes burning into the side of his head even as he presses against Margo and pretends to be sharing the most salacious gossip imaginable. Margo does an excellent job at faking being fake-scandalised, pulling the same over-the-top expressions she would have been making had they truly been gossiping; only Eliot, sat right next to her, can see the way her fingers are restlessly twitching into the gesture she usually uses to summon up ice for their drinks. 

It's a huge relief to step through their door and feel the comforting strength of the wards close around them.

"We have a problem, people!" Margo snaps, throwing her keys into the wooden bowl with more vigour than is perhaps strictly necessary. "Emergency meeting, right now!"

Josh's head pops up from behind the kitchen counter, flour painted comically across his nose in a fashion that Eliot thought only occurred in movies. A few moments later, Kady clatters down the spiral staircase.

"What's up?" She frowns. Margo barks out a bitter laugh, starting to pace.

"What's up? What's up is that we're being treated like goddamn antelope." She hisses, gesturing wildly. "Where the fuck are 23 and Julia?"

Wrinkling her nose, Kady jerks a thumb in the direction of Julia's room.

"They said something about trying to see if Julia's got some kind of mental block on her powers. I think he's incepting her."

"Nuh-uh. Not now. They can hold hands and be all squishy and romantic later. We need to plan." She storms across the apartment, stopping in front of Julia's door and hammering on it with her fist. "Get out here!"

"Bambi, maybe give them a few minutes to..."

"NOW!"

The door flies open and Penny emerges, scowling. Eliot is relieved to see that he's fully clothed: he'd been half afraid that 'incepting' had actually been a thinly veiled metaphor for sex.

Julia appears behind Penny, a look of confusion on her face. "What's wrong?"

"So it turns out that the Library has been stalking us for unknown reasons, possibly for a while." Draping herself across one of the plusher chairs, Margo gestures towards the group. "Discuss."

"That doesn't make any sense." Kady frowns.

Margo shoots her a withering look. "I'm sorry, do you need me to use smaller words? Library. Following us. That clear enough, sweetie?"

Kady glares at her, looking like it's taking all of her energy not to rip Margo a new one right now. They should probably congratulate her on her personal growth at some point; the old Kady would have been halfway across the apartment and being restrained by now. 

"What I _mean_ is that the Library has no reason to follow us. Fogg's deal meant they wouldn't come after us after Blackspire – they were only concerned with Alice because of her broken contract. And even if they just wanted to know where we lived, they wouldn't need to keep following us afterwards."

"She's right." Penny speaks up, leaning back against the stairs and looking thoughtful. "They've got bigger fish to fry than a handful of Magicians, especially now that magic is free again. There'll be folks who weren't too happy with them for trying to restrict it."

"Could that be it? You guys said that Quentin pretty much set the Monster on a murder spree so that he could break their siphon and..." Josh cuts himself off, shifting awkwardly as he glances at Eliot. "Maybe they want revenge."

"Then why not just kill us straight up? We've all been out multiple times over the past few weeks. Until today we had no idea they were out there – we were walking around with targets on our backs." Kady points out.

"I know what they want."

As one, they turn to stare at Julia. She shrugs. "Come on, isn't it obvious? They're an organisation that has proven themselves to be obsessed with collecting knowledge and dictating who has the right to access it. What do we have that they don't?"

Rolling her eyes at their blank looks, she vanishes into her room and re-emerges holding the Monster's golden prison. Eliot instinctively shrinks back into the couch, unwilling to get any closer to his former captor than absolutely needed. He chooses to ignore the way Margo is watching him carefully.

"The Monster?" Josh questions, lost.

"They don't know what Q's spell did. They know there was something inside Eliot that attacked them all. They know that whatever Quentin cast, it stopped attacking them and presumably had some kind of showdown with him. They don't know what happened afterwards."

"They've been watching us to see what happened to the Monster." Margo breathes.

Julia nods. "They probably want to add it to their collection."

"Yeah, let's _not_ give the living weapon to the organisation with worryingly totalitarian leanings, hmm?" Eliot suggests. He shudders to think what the Library might do with a being so dangerous that the gods themselves ran from it.

"Agreed." Kady crosses her arms, frowning. "What do we do about our friendly neighbourhood stalkers, though? If we take the fight to them they'll just send more."

"Then we do nothing. Let them stew – as far as they're concerned, we're holding all the cards right now. We've just got to be on the lookout when we leave the apartment." Margo stands, her mouth set and determined. Even in jeans and a knitted sweater she looks every inch the High King she is.

The meeting breaks up, people returning to whatever they were doing beforehand. Eliot plans on taking a nice, hot bath, but Kady grabs him by the elbow before he can get more than a few steps towards the bathroom.

"You need to be even more careful, Waugh." She warns him. "You're the last known host of the Monster – they'll be focusing mainly on you."

First Quentin is communicating exclusively with him and now the Library apparently want him. Eliot has never been so popular.

"I'll watch myself." He promises airily, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of his collar. "And if worst comes to worst I'll use my sexual allure to distract them and escape."

Kady looks at him dubiously, clearly not impressed with his plan. "Right. Or you can make sure that you're always with someone when you go out. If you need a bodyguard, call me up, okay?"

"Why, Miss Orloff-Diaz, you do surprise me. I didn't think you cared." It's not an act: Eliot can't actually remember a time when they've had a conversation one-to-one that was anything more developed than 'pass the milk'.

She shrugs, already turning to go. "Quentin died saving you. It seems like a poor way to repay his sacrifice if you get yourself killed a few months later."

Ouch. The blow lands and Eliot feels it like a knife between the ribs.

"Yeah. I mean...yes. Thanks for the offer." He croaks. Kady shoots him a smile and vanishes upstairs.

Eliot stands there for a moment, contemplating her words. Then he grabs a bottle of wine and makes for the bathroom.

* * *

That night, Eliot wakes to the sound of knocking on his window. Glancing at the clock, he groans at the bright red numbers taunting him through the darkness. 3am. He only went to sleep a few hours ago. Tired as he is, it takes him multiple attempts to disentangle himself from the sheets and even then he ends up bringing one with him, caught around his ankle. He sighs and co-opts it as a shawl.

This time when he pulls back the curtains it's to see Quentin there in person. He bites back a muffled yell of surprise, wearily rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Do you know what time it is, Q?" He moans, slumping against the wall. Quentin smiles boyishly, hair ruffling in the breeze that always seems to be blowing this high up.

"I wanted to see you."

" _It's 3 in the morning_."

"Which means everyone's asleep. You clearly don't want anyone to know I'm here – if you did, you'd have told someone about my notes by now."

Touché.

"Couldn't you at least have caught me just before I went to sleep rather than getting me out of bed?" Eliot protests. He's beginning to wake up a little now, the sheer absurdity of the situation starting to strike him. Less than a week ago he stood at this window and practically begged Q to show himself; now, he's complaining about his choice of timing.

"I wasn't in New York then. Go out to the balcony."

"Why?" Eliot asks suspiciously. Quentin rolls his eyes, laughing quietly at him.

"Because I'm getting fed up of having to hold onto the windowsill and you'll probably freak out if I start floating."

He vanishes before Eliot can object, leaving the older man to grumble and swap his sheet for a silk robe.

Quentin's already there by the time Eliot has sneaked out of his room and padded across the living space on socked feet. In the darkness, the ripples of fiery magic escaping from his skin set blue shadows playing across the balcony floor, tiny flames of light dancing around him. It's sort of beautiful, if you ignore how that beauty came at the cost of Quentin's soul.

"You noticed the Librarians." Is what Quentin chooses to greet him with as soon as he gets close to the sliding door. Eliot huffs, shooting the niffin an unimpressed glare.

"Yeah, thanks for being so mysterious about that, by the way. 'Someone' is following me? What was wrong with just saying the _Library_ was following me?"

Quentin shrugs. "You're smart enough to work it out for yourself. I was going to give you a hint before the others turned up."

"Why couldn't you just be straight with me?" Eliot demands, scowling when Quentin starts laughing at that. "Be serious for one second. Life isn't a game, Quentin!"

"Isn't it?" Quentin cocks his head, leaning closer to the glass. "That's _all_ it is. A game of twists and turns and terrible dice rolls, with desperate players scrabbling to come out on top whatever the cost. You just don't realise because you're still playing it."

"Considering the alternative, I think I'll keep going." Eliot says dryly. Quentin shrugs again.

"Of course you will. You're human."

"You were human too, not so long ago." Eliot points out. Quentin shudders, face twisting into a moue of distaste at the reminder.

"And then I escaped that prison of misery and flesh. I'm so much more now."

"Are you? Because to me, you seem so much less." Eliot confesses. Because it's true. It was Quentin's quirks, and the hopeless honesty with which he faced the world, that drew Eliot to Quentin long after his initial appreciation for his appearance had faded into the background of day-to-day life. The still serenity of this Q seems unnatural to him; he misses the old Quentin's tics and twitches so badly that it hurts.

Quentin scoffs, looking incredulous. His gaze flattens into something colder. "Then you're a fool, Eliot Waugh."

"Maybe. But I'm a fool you once thought was worth dying for." Eliot manages despite the way the words feel like they're slicing into him even as they leave his lips. Quentin hums thoughtfully, glancing away at the night sky.

"It was the right choice."

"Because of the power?" Eliot asks bitterly. Quentin shakes his head, the frozen blue of his eyes warming as he looks back at Eliot.

"Because you were worth everything. I'd have given up the world to get your body back for you."

Eliot holds back a sob, hands clenching into fists so tight that he feels like he's going to shake apart. He desperately wants to pull the old Q into his arms and never let him go, wants to whisper in his ear how special he is, how important he is, that there's no world that exists in which Eliot is worth more than his life.

But that time has long passed.

Pulling himself together, he shakes himself loose and looks back at Quentin's impassive countenance.

"You said you weren't in New York earlier. Where have you been?"

"Exploring, mainly."

"Where?"

"Oh, you know. Here, there, everywhere really. The universe is a big place."

"See anything interesting?"

Quentin face splits into a broad grin, eyes sparking brilliant and bright.

"You should see it, El. Right on the edge of Fillory there's a waterfall that flows upwards. And when the sun hits the water it just refracts into a million rainbows, bursting all the way around it in this sheer _explosion_ of colour. And that's just in Fillory: you wouldn't believe what I've found in the other worlds I've visited. I've touched supernovas and slipped through black holes; I've run my fingers through the clouds and felt the beads of magic that cling to them. I've walked on the bottom of another world's ocean and watched neon butterflies flap around my head."

Eliot watches him, sadness warring with the burst of fondness he feels at the familiar excitement Quentin is displaying.

"I guess you've moved beyond clocktrees and boat quests now, hmm?" He says quietly.

Quentin falls silent, tilting his head. "I'd go on a boat quest if you came with me. We never got to do one before."

"Stop." Eliot swallows and looks away. "You can't do that. It's not fair that you keep turning up and pretending to be capable of caring when I _mourn you_ every day."

"But I'm right here."

Eliot shakes his head, unable to meet his eyes. "No, you're not. Not the parts that matter, anyway."

Silence greets him. When he looks back, Quentin is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos on the last chapter! 
> 
> I really wanted to put chapters up weekly for this thing, but I've actually been working 13 hours (or more!) a day, every day, in order to make all the resources my job wants before we go back to normal. I just want to write!!! Hopefully the wait for the next chapter won't be too long - I already have some of it typed up.


	4. Chapter 4

Eliot doesn't tell the others about Quentin's second visit, even though he knows he should. It's gone beyond a joke now: Eliot could possibly have argued that the window messages were harmless moments of communication, but choosing not to reveal that Quentin has been appearing in person as well is starting to feel like a betrayal. The problem is that exposing Quentin would feel just as much a betrayal – if not more, considering that it's Eliot's fault that Quentin is like this in the first place – and Eliot is starting to feel like the living embodiment of that saying about rocks and hard places.

Getting up the next morning is a challenge, partly because of the lack of sleep – it had been well past 4am when he dragged himself back to bed and even then he'd spent a long while staring vacantly at the ceiling – and partly because of the drinks he'd poured down his throat in the wake of Q's departure. It's with trembling hands that he puts together his outfit for the day, slipping on his shirt and waistcoat as if they're battle armour and not 100% cotton and wool. Getting his face to look something even approaching healthy is another matter entirely and Eliot feels like he's worked all the perfumes of Arabia into his skin before he starts to look less like a dead man walking.

Emerging into the main living area, he blinks blearily at the sunlight streaming in through the ceiling-high windows, stumbling over to where Josh is flitting about the kitchen.

"Food." He's well aware that it isn't perhaps the politest of greetings, but Josh still shoots him a bright smile over his shoulder.

"Coming right up. I'm making spinach and pepper frittatas – that sound good?"

"That sounds _heavenly_." Eliot admits. Draping himself over the counter, he shoots Josh the most pathetic look he can manage right now...which is pretty damn pathetic, if he does say so himself. "Any coffee around?"

There's a snort from behind him and Eliot twists his head to see Kady sat at the dining table, halfway through a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

"Get it yourself, dingus." She says. The words somehow don't sound quite as harsh as you'd expect. "Josh isn't your servant."

"I don't mind!" Josh beams, jumping in. Kady rolls her eyes, gesturing with her spoon.

"See, this is why people walk all over you. You can be such a doormat sometimes."

"But he's so _good_ at it." Margo coos, sweeping in out of nowhere and planting a loud kiss on Josh's cheek. Both Kady and Eliot make vomiting noises simultaneously.

"It is way too early for your post-coital glow, Bambi." Eliot complains. Margo turns to him, grinning wickedly.

"It is _never_ too early for a post-coital glow. Don't blame me because you woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning."

Eliot's stomach twists with the memory of exactly why he woke up on the wrong side of said bed. His eyes flick to their alcohol stash before he can stop himself and he winces as he watches Margo follow his gaze. Her lips tighten as she notices the remnants of Eliot's late-night bender still spread across the cabinet, bottles out of place and a dirty highball glass left unwashed beside them.

"Speaking of starting early..." She begins. Eliot groans, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Don't judge me. I had valid reasons."

"Which were...?"

Eliot hesitates. This is the moment where he gets to come clean and alert everyone to what exactly has been going on; he can confess to talking with Q, they'll be aware that their lives are not quite as niffin-free as they've started to assume, and everyone can move on with their day. Easy.

"Dreams about the Monster." He says instead and is instantly enfolded in Margo's arms. He pushes down the stab of guilt, reminding himself that it's not a complete lie – he really has been dreaming about the Monster. Just not to the extent that he's wanted to lose himself at the bottom of a glass.

He thinks back to Margo's comment about the difference between a live hero and a dead moron being just one dumb decision and squirms.

"I feel ya, man." Josh says sympathetically, loading a frittata onto a plate and sliding it across the counter to Eliot. "Dreams can mess you up. I remember the ones I had during the Quickening. If you need to talk, just hit me up, okay?"

Oh, hello, shame. Not like he wasn't already feeling guilty before, or anything.

"Yeah. I'll...I'll do that." He chokes out.

Thankfully, that seems to be it for guilt-inducing breakfast conversation. Everyone finishes up their food with nothing more to say than a few random comments about the likelihood of Julia fessing up to being attracted to Penny anytime soon (Eliot and Josh both think chances are high; Margo is doubtful; Kady stays silent on the subject) and soon everyone is splitting up for their individual plans for the day.

Kady is off to look into something involving a girl and her father, though Eliot is hazy on the specifics. Josh has finally caved and agreed to let Margo take him shopping, though judging from the pleading look he shot Eliot as they left he's regretting that now. He has no clue where Julia and Penny are, other than the fact that their breakfast dishes are already drying by the sink so presumably they had an early start.

Which means Eliot is alone for the day.

He takes the opportunity to dig through Marina's books again, searching up information on niffins without having to face Margo's sympathetic eyes or the others' pitying stares. Nothing he finds is new to him – he's trod this path before – but re-reading the passages does start to raise questions now that he's been talking with Quentin.

All of the accounts written down or referenced here seem to very clearly describe niffins who want nothing to do with their old lives and take great pleasure in destroying those who try to cling onto them. There are no mentions of niffins who go out of their way to leave messages for people they left behind, or randomly turn up just to chat.

Which means there's something different about Q. And if there's something different about Q...

"Maybe you're not beyond saving after all." Eliot whispers. He thinks about the way Quentin vanished last night after Eliot's words. If Eliot didn't know better, he'd have thought that Quentin was hurt by them. But that doesn't make sense – everyone knows that a person's Shade is what gives them the ability to feel anything more complex than simple emotions such as rage and glee. If Quentin truly was wounded by Eliot's dismissal, then there's something going on beneath the surface that could be the answer to getting him back. Eliot just has to find it.

He spends hours tucked up on the couch, pulling heavy book after heavy book from the piles surrounding him and furiously scribbling down notes. He doesn't think he's worked this hard on anything non-Fillory related in his life: certainly not for any of his exams, which he always passed through a combination of natural talent and/or bribing other students for answers.

Working through lunch, it's not until the apartment gets too dark for him to read the words on the page that Eliot realises exactly how late it's become. A quick glance at the clock on the wall warns Eliot that he was dangerously close to working through dinner as well, something that his stomach is actively protesting now that he's aware of the time. He gives up for the day, slotting away books and hiding his notes before anyone can return and judge him for them.

He's just finished his linguine and is in the middle of putting the dish in the sink for later when there's a knock on the glass behind him. Eliot knows what he'll see before he even turns, and sure enough Quentin is stood there, blue crackling across his forehead and hands. If he was hurt by Eliot's words last night, he's showing no sign of that now: there's a broad smile on his face and he's beckoning Eliot over impatiently.

This is the third visit in a row. Eliot should definitely be ignoring Quentin, or calling the others, or fetching one of the many niffin boxes they enchanted.

Instead, he makes what he suspects Margo would call a dumb decision and goes to see what Quentin wants.

"What is it? The others will probably be back soon." He warns, drawing close to the glass. Quentin just rolls his eyes in response.

"And I should care...why? You're the one I want to see."

Eliot fights down the extremely unhelpful wave of emotion that rises up at those words. "You should care because they were your friends too. And because they might not be quite as glad to see you as I am."

"You're glad to see me?"

Eliot's breath catches; he hadn't meant to say that. He shuts his eyes briefly, shame at his own weakness flowing through him.

"Yes." He confesses. "I shouldn't be – not when you're like this – but I can't help it. I miss you."

"You're going to like me even more in a minute. I have a belated birthday gift for you."

"...what?" Eliot blinks, caught off guard. Quentin grins.

"We missed your birthday because of the Monster. So I got you a present now."

"Leave it on the balcony and I'll get it later." Eliot says. He's not sure what game Quentin is playing here and it's throwing him off-balance.

Quentin sighs in exasperation, resting his hands on his hips and frowning. "It's not that kind of gift. It's more...an experience."

"And let me guess," Eliot says sceptically, crossing his own arms and frowning right back. "That experience requires me coming outside."

"Uhuh."

"You must think I'm a real idiot."

"Not at all."

"So what, it's just a coincidence that your gift requires me to leave the safety of our wards and get close to you?"

"Yes!" Quentin is starting to look frustrated now, his nose doing that wrinkling thing Eliot remembers so well from countless mosaic patterns coming to nothing. "Please, El. Just trust me."

It's the nickname that does it, as well as the simple plea for Eliot's trust when Eliot has never been able to give Quentin anything less.

He's so weak.

It's with a huge sense of foreboding that Eliot makes what is most likely the dumbest decision of all and slides open the door to the balcony. Feeling like he's signing his own death warrant, he steps out past the wards and into the cooling night air, lifting his chin challengingly at Quentin as he does so.

He waits for Quentin to hurt him, half-expecting him to start laughing hysterically and pitch him over the side. But instead he just stands there, smiling. (And there's pleasure there, but no warmth; it's not Quentin's smile. Not the smile he would give when talking about _Fillory & Further_, or when he tucked Teddy into bed).

Quentin reaches for his arm and he instinctively flinches back. Quentin's smile dims.

"What are you doing? I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt you."

Eliot stares at him incredulously. "You tried to burn Julia alive."

A broad grin splits Quentin's face, lighting it up as he sniggers. "It was funny. Wasn't it funny? She was so surprised! And she healed herself anyway, so what does it matter?"

Eliot shuts his eyes and looks away, unable to listen.

"Jesus Christ, Q. Do you even hear yourself?"

He gasps as an invisible force slams him back against the building wall, eyes flying open as every scrap of air in his lungs suddenly seems to escape him. Quentin is pacing the balcony, muttering to himself, lightning streaking through his cheeks and throat too fast for Eliot to really see clearly. Eventually he whirls round, pointing a furious finger at Eliot. His eyes are ice, flashing a brilliant sapphire blue as he meets Eliot's wary gaze.

"Stop judging me!" Quentin stamps his foot, blue sparks shooting out from underneath him. "You're not meant to judge me! Why do you have to ruin everything?!"

He slams a crackling hand against the wall behind Eliot's head and Eliot stills, prey instinct kicking in as Quentin leans closer. Q's left hand lifts, reaching for Eliot's neck, and Eliot prepares for death. He can already imagine the unforgiving clutch of Quentin's fingers around his throat, the unhesitating squeeze of the niffin's grip as he chokes the air out of him. Worse, he can also picture Margo's face in the morning when they find his stiff corpse left to rot with nothing more than a ring of burnt finger marks about his throat to reveal what happened to him.

He's been a fool, he thinks. He'd let Quentin's familiar features trick him into trusting something that is nothing more than rage and magic, and now he's going to pay the price. And to make matters worse, his last sight of this world is going to be a face he knows better than his own twisted into something vicious and furious.

Except that death doesn't come.

A flashing finger reaches up and traces a slow line across Eliot's jaw, trailing downwards until it rests lightly in the notch at the base of his throat. It doesn't burn. Eliot swallows, shivering as Quentin's other hand slips down, sliding off the wall and onto his shoulder before gradually gliding down, down, down to press against the curve of his hip.

"Q...?" Eliot breathes uncertainly. Quentin stares up at him, so close now that Eliot can feel the pulsing energy of him. There's something brewing in his gaze, something wild and frenetic that makes the hairs on the back of Eliot's neck stand on end.

Then Quentin smiles brilliantly at him and moves away, rage forgotten as quickly as it had come. 

"We shouldn't fight." He says lightly. "Not on your birthday."

The magic pinning Eliot to the wall slides away and Eliot staggers forward, sucking in an unsteady breath. Quentin pays little attention, turning away to face the city before them.

He tilts his head, studying something that Eliot can't see before nodding decisively and raising his hands. He weaves them through the air, making bold, complicated motions that set the molecules about them singing and the magic inside Eliot straining to escape and join the dance.

And then the lights go out. Eliot gapes as, one after another, the lights in all the buildings as far as the eye can see blink off as one. Darkness ripples across New York in a giant wave, swallowing up landmarks and skyscrapers until Eliot is stood in the middle of a black void of nothingness, the flames licking through Quentin's form the only source of light for miles around.

"You're giving me...darkness. Very poetic. My angsty teenage self is thoroughly..."

"Look up, Eliot." Quentin says softly. So Eliot does.

And his words fall away.

Up above, a flurry of lights streak across the night sky, radiant sparks shooting through the darkness like glorious arrows. Eliot stares up at them in awe, watching as they twist and spin through the air in magnificent movements that betray a grace that Eliot has never seen before in nature. Without the light pollution, he can see everything; he can't remember seeing a sky this clear and bright since leaving Indiana.

Laughing, he moves forward to lean against the balustrade. Surrounded by beauty and the glow of falling silver, he feels lighter than he has since Quentin burned up.

"Q. This is...this is spectacular." He breathes. He's so focused on the dancing lights above that he barely notices Quentin gliding across the balcony to stand beside him.

"A spectacular lightshow for a spectacular king. Happy birthday, Eliot."

Eliot turns his head to grin at him. Something that he long thought dead has sputtered to life inside of him, woken up by Q's magic and the sheer beauty that envelops them. He wants to jump up and down; he wants to vault through the air and dance through the street on tiptoes; he wants to swing through the urban jungle on invisible wires, hollering out his joy for the world to hear.

Quentin is smiling, watching as if he can see Eliot's happiness bursting out of him and scattering through the air. Who knows – maybe he can now. He holds a hand out, palm upwards, and this time Eliot doesn't hesitate before taking it, sliding his fingers between Q's and shivering at the tingle that ripples across his hand and up his spine.

They stand there together, watching the stars fall in silence. It's everything that Eliot never knew he wanted until he took Quentin in his arms that first night on the mosaic; it's everything he thought he lost when Quentin burned in front of him.

It's perfect.

And then reality intrudes, a nagging thought finally digging through the layers of bliss to make itself known. He jerks, looking at Quentin with wide eyes.

"Quentin...what about the hospitals?"

"What about them?" Eliot must make a face at that, because Quentin makes a 'tch' sound and starts frowning. "Oh, don't make it a thing. We were having fun, weren't we?"

"People are going to _die_ , Quentin."

Quentin huffs, but obligingly flicks his free hand upwards. In the distance, a few buildings appear out of the darkness, windows lit up and glowing brightly against the otherwise black sky.

"Fine. Happy now?"

Eliot looks at him: this version of Quentin that should be long gone by now, his old Brakebills life forgotten, yet who chooses to keep coming back to Eliot. Who gave Eliot the stars for his birthday. Who stands there even now, holding Eliot's hand and looking so damn beautiful that Eliot's heart twists at the sight of him.

"Not quite. But as close as I can be these days." He says honestly. Quentin blinks and goes quiet, observing him silently. Eliot stares back, refusing to back down. Then, slowly, a small, surprised smile creeps its way across Quentin's face. It's lovely in its simplicity, something truthful and honest about it that has been lacking in Quentin's other smiles tonight. Eliot can't stop himself from reaching out to touch it, cupping Quentin's cheek with his left hand and hissing slightly as magic sparks across his fingers at the contact.

He rubs a thumb across Quentin's cheekbone, slowly sweeping it back and forth. In front of him, Quentin stands quiescent and still, eyelids flickering shut as Eliot continues petting him. His hand twitches in Eliot's grasp, his own thumb shifting to stroke light patterns against Eliot's skin.

Somewhere above them the stars are still falling, but Eliot has long forgotten them now.

"Q..." He says thickly. He can hear his own breathing, loud and rasping in the silent darkness. It picks up as Quentin's eyes flutter open and he can't stop himself from leaning closer, drinking in the sight of that sweet, sweet face upturned towards him. "Q, you have to know I..."

"You are bound and held fast. Seni bağlarım!"

Eliot whips around, panic consuming him. Standing in the doorway, Margo's face is agonised but determined as she holds the glowing box towards Quentin.

"Bambi, _no_." From the corner of his eye he sees Quentin tense up beside him, hand slipping from his grasp. Margo keeps chanting.

"I bind you! Seni bağlar..."

" _No_!" It's instinct to snatch the box out of her hands with telekinesis, ripping it away from her and sending it flying out into the night. Margo flinches, staring at him in betrayed understanding.

"El, honey, that's not Quentin anymore. He has no Shade. Remember Alice? She tried to kill us, Eliot. She'd literally just saved all our lives and five minutes later she wanted us dead just because."

Eliot grits his teeth, shaking his head. "And then Quentin saved us."

" _Five minutes_ , El. Quentin's been gone for weeks now." She steps closer, high heels clicking on the tiled floor. "Do you really think he cares at all? He'd kill us at the drop of a hat."

It all happens so fast after that.

One moment, Margo is reaching for him, large eyes dark and pleading as she makes her case.

Then suddenly she's jerking back as Quentin vanishes from beside Eliot only to reappear right in her face, a blue hand shooting out to grab her by the wrist.

"True." Quentin hisses.

And he throws her off the balcony.

* * *

Margo's terrified shriek is going to live in Eliot's memory forever, along with Quentin's dying screams, Logan's broken remains and the sight of Mike's crumpled form on the floor. He lunges forwards, slamming his ribs hard enough into the balustrade to shatter them and not even caring, both hands outstretched and trembling as he throws out his power and grabs for her wildly.

The resulting jerk as he manages to latch on is almost enough to send him flying over the edge himself, but he braces himself against the rail and _pulls_ , the taste of copper heavy in his mouth as he strains under her weight. He's never used his powers on anything this heavy before – not consciously anyway, not since Logan Kinear – and there's a shrill ringing in his ears as he breaks her fall and slowly, ever so slowly begins to pull her back up.

And all the time, Quentin is crouched on the balcony railing, beside himself with laughter.

By the time that he has Margo within reach, the world has gone blurry around the edges and his vision is swimming. Eliot grips her round the wrists and physically yanks her the last few feet, crashing backwards and onto the floor as they finally clear the balustrade. He instantly wraps her in his arms, holding so tightly onto her shaking form that for a moment it feels like they are one being.

"You're okay. You're okay." He murmurs, pressing frantic kisses to her hair. "I've got you. You're safe."

Margo shudders in his grip, a harsh sob escaping her as she clings to him. Eliot rocks her, his own eyes burning as he thinks about how close he came to losing her. Just a few seconds more and she'd have been out of his reach, falling too far and fast for Eliot to catch her. She'd have just been...gone.

Quentin's laughing is still pealing out, planting vicious thorns in the hollow cavity of Eliot's chest. Eliot can feel the fury rising in him, a white hot ocean that threatens to scorch everything in its path.

"What the fuck were you playing at?! She could have died!" He roars.

Quentin stops laughing immediately, mouth a hard line and eyes sparking as he tilts his head to look down at them. "That was the idea."

Eliot stares at him, unable to reconcile this cold creature with the one who gave him the stars and held his hand so sweetly. Seeing his look, Quentin shrugs.

"She tried to box me."

Just like that. No hint of remorse, no moment of self-doubt. Just a simple statement of fact.

Eliot slumps against Margo, horror coursing through his veins. "What the fuck, Quentin. You tried to..." He wraps an arm around her, feeling her shake." "Why would you...?"

"She tried to box me, Eliot. Why are you taking her side?"

"You tried to kill her!"

"So? One less human in the world. Whoop de doop."

Quentin sneers down at them from the railing, distant and otherworldly. It's not a front – Eliot can tell from the derisive twist to his lip that he genuinely can't see the problem with Margo dying. He's so far removed from humanity in this moment that he might as well be on a different planet; the idea of killing a human seems to offer no more distress to him than a human might feel stepping on a beetle.

"I'm human too." Eliot reminds him, voice hoarse.

Quentin just blinks at him, nonplussed. "You're different."

"What the fuck does that even mean?"

"You're Eliot." It's a simple response, a mere recitation of his name, yet somehow it feels...more. Like that answer actually means something to Quentin. He gapes up at the niffin, unable to understand what's happening here. Quentin looks oddly earnest, head tilted to the side as he stares down at Eliot.

He drops to the balcony floor, landing in a crouch beside them. A small smile snakes across his face as Margo flinches and makes a small involuntary noise, but it vanishes just as quickly. He barely even spares her a glance as he makes unblinking eye contact with Eliot.

"You're..." He pauses, a small frown of confusion flitting between his brows before smoothing out as if it were never there. "...interesting."

Eliot just looks at him, this predator with an angel's face, and tightens his grip on Margo's shoulders.

"Fuck off, Quentin." He spits.

And he does.

As soon as he's gone, the lights snap back on around them, the distant sound of confused car horns beginning to drift up as drivers try to figure out right of way now that their lights are working and traffic is flowing again. Somewhere, an alarm starts ringing.

Margo is unsteady on her feet as Eliot stands and pulls her up, legs trembling in a way that has nothing to do with the frankly ridiculous heels she has on right now. They don't speak as he helps her inside to the couch, or as Eliot moves his hands in the twisting tuts that will reseal and strengthen the balcony door wards. Margo watches him silently as he crosses the room to the cabinet and pours two healthy splashes of whiskey into two glasses, throwing one of them back immediately before refilling it.

Returning to the couch, he presses the fullest glass into her shaking hands and takes it away to refill when she follows his lead and swallows it in two gulps. She cradles his second offering in both hands, looking down at the quivering amber liquid and refusing to meet his eyes as he seats himself across from her.

He wants to press himself against her, make sure she's still here. He somehow thinks he wouldn't be welcome right now.

They sit in silence. The only sound in the whole apartment is the slow, steady ticking of the designer clock on the wall, an angular monstrosity that Eliot has outwardly praised for its fashionable shape but actually secretly hates. It reminds him of the clock they used to have at Sunday school, some misshapen hunk of metal that someone had convinced the pastor's wife was all the rage in the dizzy heights of Indianapolis. Young Eliot had wasted hours of his life staring at the thing, watching the rough hands clank their way round with devastating slowness and desperately wishing it were at least an hour later than it always invariably was. Time had seemed to stand still in that small room.

It seems to stand still here too. Margo has drained her second drink but is making no moves to replenish it, simply rolling the cut glass between her hands and watching it refract the light from the solitary lamp Eliot flicked on earlier.

Eliot swallows, leaning forward.

"Bambi..." He begins. Margo's eyebrows shoot up, eyes dark and narrow and furious beneath them as she glares at him.

"You don't get to use that name. Not right now." She hisses. Eliot flinches, the hard knot of panic in his stomach twisting further.

"Margo, I..."

"What the fuck were you thinking, Eliot?" She cries, slamming the glass down so hard that it's a miracle it doesn't break. "We _talked_ about this. You know he's dangerous! What happened to using the niffin box?"

"I couldn't...I didn't..."

"Didn't what? Think? That was abundantly clear. Or did I imagine you _holding hands_ with a niffin?" Every word drips with scorn and fury, poisoning the air between the pair of them. But what's worse is the disappointment he can hear behind those words, the frustrated confusion as to why Eliot has risked it all like this. Eliot feels about ten inches tall.

"He's...he's not like other niffins, Margo. He's..."

"Oh, save the Twilight bullshit for some other tender-hearted sap. Real life doesn't work that way. The magic burned through him and destroyed everything you think you're seeing in him now."

Eliot swallows, the echo of Quentin's screams mixing with Margo's wail as she flew over the balustrade. He wraps his arms around his middle, shifting restlessly in his seat.

"He didn't hurt me. He had me up against the wall and he just let me go." Eliot shuts his eyes, picturing Quentin's sweet, surprised smile. "He gave me the _stars_."

"No. He was _playing with you_ , Eliot. That's all. You think he cares about you? You think he honestly gives a shit what you think?" She leans forward, eyes brimming with unshed tears. "Quentin is _gone_. You need to accept that."

"I..."

"Or do you think he was just waiting on a chance to murder me before? What do you think, Eliot, was he just biding his time and holding out for the perfect opportunity to strike?" Margo's voice wobbles, but she doesn't back down, head held high as she dares Eliot to look away from her. "Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe our little Q had hidden depths. Maybe he really wouldn't have thought twice about flinging me to my death."

Each word is like a dagger, vicious points stabbing into him and tearing at the fragile flesh of his heart. Because of course the answer is no. Quentin would have sooner cut off his own hands than tried to hurt Margo like that. He'd have done worse if it meant saving her life. The creature that just threw Margo to her death so casually? That's not Q.

Eliot has been fooling himself.

"Maybe Quentin didn't care about me at all." Margo continues. There's a single tear slipping down her cheek now and she lifts a hand to angrily dash it away. "Maybe you don't care either."

Eliot reels. "Bambi, how can you say that?"

"How can _you_ sit there and defend the _thing that tried to kill me_?!" Margo cries, the words exploding out of her in a flood of pain and fury. Eliot is across the room in an instant, collapsing down next to her and ready to face the consequences of her wrath, but she doesn't strike. Instead, she sinks into his arms and lets him hold her, burying her face in his neck and sobbing out all the fear and anger that she wouldn't let herself express in front of Quentin. Eliot lets out a small moan of anguish, feeling helpless and utterly useless as she comes to terms with her brush with death.

It's his fault.

It's _all_ his fault. He knew he should have told Margo and the others about Quentin before. He knew that he should have done something about his visits other than drink and blindly wait for the next one.

But he did and said nothing, and tonight he almost paid the heaviest of prices for that decision.

"I'm sorry." He whispers into her hair. "I'm so, so fucking sorry, Margo. I fucked up. I fucked up big time."

She lets out a watery snort of a laugh and pulls back slightly. "That's an understatement."

"I know. I know. I just...he was so _him_. And I wanted it so much, like you can't believe, and I convinced myself that it _was_ him. But then..."

He trails off, taking her hand in his and bringing her wrist to his lips. It's already ringed with bruises, perfect skin marred with dark red ovals that stand out stark even in the dim lighting. Eliot kisses them, trying to ignore the fact that he was only just holding the hand that caused them.

"But then he tried to hurt you. And nothing and no one is worth more to me than you are." He finishes.

Margo rolls her eyes, a small hint of a smile flickering across her lips.

"If you think you're getting out of this with a bit of smooth talk..."

"I wouldn't dare to presume." Eliot says easily, settling them both back against the couch. It's an easiness he doesn't really feel and he's well aware that Margo can see right through him – every particle of him is thrumming with the sickening knowledge of what Quentin did tonight. But right now he has Bambi in his arms when he very nearly lost that forever and all he wants to do is bathe in her presence for a while.

He doesn't know how long they sit like that. Long enough for Margo's trembling to stop at least, though the odd tremor shivers its way through her body every now and then. Certainly long enough for the hummingbird patter of her heart to slow and calm against him, sinking into a steady reassuring thump that kind of makes Eliot want to cry right now.

He wants to bottle up that beat and place it under his pillow at night, a soothing and unyielding reminder that _Bambi's alive, Bambi's alive, Bambi's alive..._

Pressing a gentle kiss against her forehead, Eliot lets out a shuddering breath as Margo squeezes his waist in return. He doesn't even want to contemplate what his life would be like without her. Even after escaping Indiana, he'd been rudderless and without purpose. His time at SUNY Purchase had been a blur of alcohol and meaningless sex as he celebrated finally being out from underneath his father's thumb, endless weekends spent navigating the 2-hour bus/train combo into Manhattan and finding a vast array of new and inadvisable experiences to explore. It hadn't been until Brakebills that Eliot had finally found where he belonged and that had far less to do with magic than the tiny powerhouse that had sat down next to him on the first day and demanded he share his flask.

Margo had been the first person to truly see someone worth knowing in Eliot after Taylor and Eliot wouldn't be who he was today without her.

And now he was the reason why she nearly died.

_Christ_. Quentin, Margo...how many more of the people he loves are going to suffer for his mistakes?

"I love you. You know that, right?" He mumbles into Margo's hair. She shifts in his arms, nuzzling her face into his chest.

"Yeah," She says quietly. "I do, El."

Eliot is just considering floating the bottle of whiskey over to them when there's the sound of a key in the lock and Josh appears, laden down with bags.

"Hey, do you think there's a chance we can get those Librarian guys to help carry the shopping? Because let me tell you, getting food _and_ holding onto..." He trails off, taking in the way Eliot and Margo are curled into each other. "Did something happen?"

"Quentin was here." Eliot doesn't need to say anything more; Josh grimaces, putting down the bags with a thump and making his way over to them.

"Jeez. Did you...did you box him?" He sounds half-afraid of the answer, as if he's not sure which would be the better option. Eliot somehow always forgets – or maybe chooses to forget – what an inherently decent person he is. If Brakebills sorted students based on personality, Josh would be true Hufflepuff.

"I tried. It did not go well." Margo huffs. Josh reaches over to pat her hand sympathetically.

"I hear ya. He pull a vanishing act again?"

Eliot winces. "I...may have got in the way. Just a little bit."

"And then our not-so-friendly neighbourhood niffin decided to try throwing me off the building."

"You're kidding, right?" Josh asks, eyes flicking between the two of them. At their stony silence he reels, reaching over to hug Margo before clearly thinking better of separating them and pulling back. Reluctantly, Eliot unwinds his arm and lets her slide across to her not-my-boyfriend-we're-not-really-doing-labels-jeez-El-stop-asking bedmate.

Josh has her curled in his arms before Eliot even has time to really register the loss and that, if nothing else, makes Eliot think that Josh just might have achieved what hundreds of other men haven't even come close to. He can count the number of people Margo lets her guard down with like that on one hand and still have fingers left over. ( _One more than there used to be_ , a nasty voice reminds him). If Josh can hold her like that and not lose an eye over it? He's definitely a candidate for the long-haul.

"Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" The Naturalist asks worriedly, his hands smoothing anxiously over her shoulders. Margo shrugs, showing him her wrist.

"Just this. El caught me before I could become this season's hottest pancake."

Josh flicks his eyes across to Eliot, his face naked with relief. Eliot swallows, toasting them with his empty glass as his stomach knots.

"The very least I could do considering it was my fault he got the drop on you."

"I'm sure it wasn't anything to..." Josh begins placatingly, but Margo cuts him off with a snort. 

"No, it was definitely his fault. The dickhole ripped the niffin box out of my hand when I was halfway through the spell. Didn't want me boxing his little boyfriend."

Eliot cringes. It all sounds even worse out loud.

"You ripped...no, okay, I can see that. It was all very sudden, emotions were running high...you just followed your instincts."

"What, fucking things up?" Eliot crooks a finger, finally giving into temptation and summoning the whiskey bottle. He's well aware he sounds bitter.

Josh looks at him funny. "No. Protecting Q."

God, has he been that obvious? Is everyone in the group aware that he's been pining away like some war widow instead of just failing to cope with the loss of one of his best friends? Or...

"Bambi..." He drawls warningly. Margo looks offended.

"Don't blame _me_. You know I'd have 'fessed up if I'd said something – I'm not _that_ much of a bitch."

"Oh, please. How unobservant do you think I am? It's what you do. You, Quentin, Margo...you protect each other. You're like the holy trinity."

Eliot and Margo stare at each other.

"You mean...like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost?" Eliot finally manages, perplexed. Josh blinks.

"No, like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Fair warning – Margo is Batman."

Fair enough. Eliot definitely has the legs to pull off Wonder Woman's hotpants.

He's not sure if Josh's evaluation of their trio's relationship is better or worse than everyone knowing about his redundant feelings. Sure, he's been saved the humiliation of having his heart laid out for everyone to see. But it also reinforces just how off-balance they've all been since Quentin niffined out. Margo's been doing her best, but they're like a tripod missing a leg and there's only so long they can keep wobbling along like this without something changing.

He has a nasty feeling that it's him who needs to be doing the changing.

"As pleased as I am to be playing into your leather fantasies," Margo begins and _ew_ , Eliot did not need to hear that. "Is there a chance either of you two knuckleheads are confident with Polaski's Mending, or do I need to wait for Orloff-Diaz to come back?"

Frowning, Eliot reaches across and gently lifts Margo's wrist, wincing when he sees the swelling beginning to form there.

"Bambi, you know I'm good for hangovers and nothing else." He reminds her apologetically. Josh shakes his head, looking regretful.

"I can give it a go, but I'd probably end up making things worse."

Margo rolls her eyes. "Amateurs. I'm surrounded by amateurs."

"We should probably look into healing a bit more, actually." Josh muses. "With the amount of crap we seem to get into, it would probably be the sensible thing to do."

"Since when have we been sensible?" Margo and Eliot retort at the same time. They grin at each other and Eliot feels the hard lump of anxiety in his stomach begin to dissolve. 

Josh shakes his head in mock exasperation.

"Seriously, guys. We can't always rely on Kady to be around, or being able to get to Brakebills or Fillory. One of these days someone is going to end up losing a limb and we all know it's most likely going to be me."

Eliot hums thoughtfully, leaning back against the couch and considering it. "It's not a bad shout. We _do_ tend to attract trouble."

"Exactly!" Josh is nodding enthusiastically in a way that strongly reminds Eliot of those toy dogs people put in the back of their cars. "I'm sure Kady would be willing to teach us. Or maybe Lipson?"

"There's no way I'm spending more time with Lipson than I have to." Margo disagrees. Sighing, Josh holds his hands up in defeat.

"Fine. Then we ask Kady. Agreed?"

"Agreed. We'll make sure we all have the healing touch just in case things go pear-shaped again." Eliot wiggles his fingers demonstratively, wincing a little as he thinks about tonight's drama again. "I mean, we're probably lucky that we made it so many niffin visits before things kicked off."

"I'm sorry, _what_?" Margo's icy tones crack through the room like a whip and Eliot freezes as he realises exactly what he's just unthinkingly confessed to. Because like a dumbass he _still_ hadn't actually told Margo about any of Quentin's previous appearances or trips down memory lane.

Cringing back into the couch cushions, he hesitatingly risks a glance at Margo's face and barely holds back a whimper at the pure rage he finds there.

"Um..."

"Are you telling me that tonight wasn't the first time we've been graced with that psycho niffin's presence? And that you've been hiding it from us?" Her voice is the coldest he's ever heard it, edges sharp enough to cut yourself on. Josh is subtly edging away from her as if worried she's going to explode and take him with her.

"I wouldn't say _hiding_ exactly. Just...not telling anyone about it?" Eliot tries. Margo's nostrils flare.

"Eliot. Exactly how long has this been going on for?"

"A few weeks?" At Margo's furious expression he hurriedly rushes to defend himself. "I mean, not the physical visits. Those have only been going on for a few days. But, um, he may have been leaving me messages for a while before that...?"

His voice trails away in the face of Margo's wrath. He knows a losing cause when he sees one.

"Jesus! A few weeks?! Eliot, how stupid can you be?!" She demands. Eliot is fairly certain that if her wrist weren't hurting she'd be trying to strangle him right now. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"

Eliot can't meet her eyes. He stares down at his hands instead. "I didn't want you to box him."

"You absolute fucking fuck. I _knew_ something was going on with you. I knew it!" She suddenly smacks a hand against the table and Eliot jumps, looking up to find her pointing at him. "That time before Central Park, when I walked in to find you communing with your window. That was him, wasn't it?"

"That was the first time."

"Christ, Eliot. I don't even know what to say to you right now."

"Things seem to be getting a little heated here." Josh intercedes. "Maybe we should all take a breath and..."

"You loved him. I get it. But what you've done put us all in danger. I can't even stand to be in the same room as you right now." Margo stands, towering over Eliot despite her tiny form. Her lip trembles even as she lifts her head in a silent challenge.

"Bambi..." He tries. She sniffs, turning away.

"I love you, El. But right now I'm so mad that I can't bear to look at you." Striding across the living space, she pauses at the door leading to the room she's claimed as her own. "I'm going to lie down. Josh, you're invited. Eliot, you're not."

The slamming of the door sounds terribly final in the resounding silence left in her wake. Eliot swallows, looking across to where Josh is still sat looking horribly awkward and uncomfortable.

"You should go to her. If she thinks you're taking sides it will take forever for you to get back in her good books again."

Josh shifts, hesitant. It looks like he's torn between attempting to comfort the younger man and making a valiant attempt to pretend he never heard Margo expose the true depth of Eliot's feelings.

"You sure, man? I mean, tonight has clearly been a _night_ for you."

"Margo got thrown off a building. I can cope with a few pesky feelings. She needs you way more than I do right now." Eliot assures him. Josh nods and gets to his feet. He hesitates by the drinks cabinet, clearly embarrassed by what he's about to say.

"Just...maybe stay away from the alcohol, yeah? I'm guessing Margo will want a meeting with everyone at some point and you're going to need a clear head. Have one of the cookies instead – their effects are much more short-lived."

Great. Is this what he's become, the apartment lush that drinks whenever he feels sad? Maybe not quite an ill-fitting title, but not exactly one he wants to claim.

"I'll be fine. Go and comfort your not-girlfriend." Eliot says wearily. Josh lingers for a few moments before shrugging and following Margo into her room.

For a while, Eliot just sits there. He's not sure what he's waiting for – for the others to come back, so he can confess his idiocy? For Quentin to reappear? Maybe just for the world to stop spinning and for things to stop being quite so shit for a while.

But no one comes and Eliot knows full well that life doesn't work like that. Sighing, he levers himself up and goes to put away the food Josh brought. The takeaway's gone cold, but it's nothing that a little heat spell won't fix tomorrow; Eliot certainly doesn't feel like eating right now. The rest can go in the fridge and cupboards, ready to be used in whatever dish Eliot or Josh next dream up. Or just be devoured by Penny or Kady in whatever Frankenstein's monster of a meal they throw together next time they get hungry.

The rest of the bags hold Josh's new clothes, as well as a few outfits that Margo clearly bought for herself and then left with Josh when she came home early. A few shirts escaped when Josh dropped the shopping earlier and Eliot smoothes his hands over the plastic coverings before slipping them carefully back into their bags.

Kady, Penny and Julia still haven't returned by the time Eliot has finished washing up the skillet he used for his linguine earlier and his and Margo's whiskey glasses. He flips off the lamp with a twitch of his fingers, navigating the apartment by the ambient light from the buildings across the way. Pausing by the balcony door, he reaches out to lightly rest his fingers against the glass. It stays cold beneath his touch.

"Q, if you can hear me...fuck off. Just fuck off, okay? We're done here. Got it? We're done."

The apartment stays silent and dark.

Eliot goes to bed.


	5. Chapter 5

Breakfast the next morning is nothing like the reasonably light-hearted encounter of yesterday.

Eliot shifts uncomfortably on the counter stool, trying to pretend that he hasn't got five pairs of eyes burning holes in his face following Margo's casual declaration of exactly what went down yesterday evening.

"Run that past me again. Because I swear I just heard you say that Waugh has been seeing Coldwater on the down-low." Penny-23's voice is incredulous, a low rumble of anger bubbling beneath his words. "Except that can't be right, because no one is that much of a dumbass."

"Quentin hid Alice inside of him when she was a niffin." Kady points out. She's halfway through another bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and is being surprisingly non-judgemental about all of this. Which is more than Eliot can say about the angriest member of their little team.

"Of course he fucking did." Penny rolls his eyes. "I swear, that idiot causes trouble in every timeline."

"Hey." Eliot frowns, lifting his head to glare at Penny. "From what I gather, yeah - your Quentin went off the deep end. But our Quentin..."

"Tried to throw Margo to her death last night. Man, he tries to kill your best friend and you _still_ can't help yourself. It's sick."

"That..." Eliot swallows, forcing the words past his lips. "That's not Q. Not anymore. It's not the same."

"Oh, please. You don't really believe that. You're still all sad and droopy-eyed over him, moping about the place like some..."

" _Hey_." Margo slams her mug down on the surface, cutting Penny off mid-sentence. "This 'best friend'? Can speak for herself. He may be an idiot, but he's _my_ idiot. So back the _fuck_ off."

Eliot loves her with every fibre of his being. He'd stayed awake nearly all last night, worrying that this was the final nail in the coffin of his and Margo's relationship. But the fact that she's defending him even when spitting mad tells him that they're going to be okay.

"And while you're at it," Margo sneers, eyes flashing. "Stop talking shit about someone who was a better person than most of us will ever be. Eliot's right – that thing is not Quentin. Our Quentin died doing the best he could, so you need to bury whatever little grudge you carried over from your timeline and deal with it."

Penny gapes at her. He looks around the kitchen for support, but no one will meet his eyes.

"You guys are all nuts." He says finally, slumping back against the wall. Julia places a soothing hand on his arm and shoots a look at Eliot.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you would have boxed him. And until then, he hadn't hurt anyone. Not really. I mean..." He trails off, wincing as he remembers Julia's whimpers of pain when Quentin burned her. She must be able to tell what he's thinking because she shrugs.

"Whatever. I'm not sure it counts."

"Oh, it counts." Penny mutters. Julia rolls her eyes, smiling slightly.

"Right. Julia got burnt, I'm sporting this lovely new accessory..." Margo brandishes her arm, still painted in a grotesque canvas of purples and blacks despite Kady's attempt at healing it this morning. "We've all got boo-boos. What we need now is a plan."

"I say we use Waugh here as bait. Set him out on the balcony, let Coldwater come to him and then bring out the boxes."

"And if Quentin hurts him?" Kady asks sceptically. Penny shrugs, smirking.

"Then they both get what they deserve."

"Thank you, Penny, for that kind comment." Eliot bites back. "But he doesn't exactly hang around here all the time – we'd have no way of knowing when he'd appear, if at all."

Christ. He can't believe he's talking about this. Even after what happened with Margo, even after everything, the thought of actually boxing Quentin turns his stomach. But they have no choice.

"Could we summon him?" Josh asks. Margo shakes her head, crossing her arms.

"You have to call to them at the place of their transformation with something personal. The personal thing we can do. But I somehow don't think the Library is going to welcome us with open arms if we try to get in there."

Eliot wonders if she's remembering the same thing he is: Quentin rolling around in the dirt and leaping gracelessly through the air as he tried to summon Alice's niffin. It had been both cringe-worthy and heartbreaking at the same time. Back then, Eliot had been vaguely in awe of Quentin's refusal to give up on someone he loved, unable to understand how his wounded heart could just keep pouring out love like that. If only he'd known then what he knows now.

"We should contact Alice."

Five heads whip round to stare at Kady. She raises her eyebrow in return.

"What? Can you think of a better expert? She's a genius and she knows what it's like to be a niffin. Plus she owes us, big time."

There's a moment's silence as everyone digests this. Margo looks like she very much wants to protest but can't find a valid enough reason. Josh is clearly on-board with this plan, while Penny seems sullen but accepting. Julia looks like she wants to cut a bitch – perhaps not surprising considering that it's Alice's fault she lost her goddess powers and got stranded in this weird magicless halfway state.

"Fine." Margo sighs, every inch of her screaming that she doesn't want to do this. "Does anyone know where she is? Or how to get hold of her?"

The plan nearly falls apart there and then. It turns out that the last time anyone saw Alice was when she came to save Quentin and inadvertently bought Eliot time to escape his Happy Place. And of course, the last person to speak to her had been Quentin himself. If Alice had left him an address he certainly hadn't shared it with anyone before going off to play the hero.

Eliot ends up scribbling a note on a piece of paper and folding it into an aeroplane, enchanting it in much the same way he did in Fillory what feels like eons ago. He chucks it out the window and they all watch it soar away, carried through the sky by magical currents until it vanishes from view. Eliot hopes she's still on the continent; he's never tested this spell any further before.

"Right. Now that that's sorted, I say we call this little meeting to a close." Penny says. "Waugh, let us know if your little boyfriend leaves you any more lovenotes."

"Fuck off, Penny." Eliot says sweetly. He'd like to say that Penny's look of utter devastation is down to his wit, but he has a feeling it has sadly far more to do with Julia's heeled boots.

The group clears out, Josh still shovelling muffin into his mouth even as he scoops up yesterday's shopping and carts it off into his room. Eliot tries to catch Margo's eye as she walks past, but she manages to avoid his gaze. Which is...fine. Completely fine. Nothing at all to do with the way his stomach cramps up anxiously.

Eventually it's just him and Julia left in the kitchen, Eliot with his pathetically limp toast and Julia nursing an orange juice. He's not an idiot – he knows that Julia hung back on purpose – but he has no idea what's going to come out of this conversation. He assumes she's going to yell at him for not spilling the details earlier. Or maybe she's going to try and apologise for Penny's behaviour. Or maybe...

"How was he?"

Or that.

Eliot clears his throat, staring straight ahead as he pictures the look of excitement on Quentin's face as he described all the wonders he'd seen.

"Happy. As far as niffins go, anyway. He'd been exploring Fillory and some other worlds out there – said he'd been touching clouds and walking through oceans."

Julia smiles, eyes bright as she brings the orange juice to her lips for a fortifying sip. Eliot hopes she doesn't start crying: her mascara game is on fire today.

"That's good. I'm glad, you know? If he can't be here with us, then at least he gets to have fun exploring the universe. He deserves that."

"Margo didn't deserve what happened to her." Eliot scoffs bitterly. "Neither did you."

Julia tilts her head, considering. "Maybe not. But I'm still glad some part of him gets to experience all of this. Even if it's not really Quentin anymore there's enough of him in there that I can tell myself, 'hey, at least Quentin finally got to explore other worlds like we talked about as kids'. It's about time he got the fantasy world without the murderous creature."

"Yeah, because he _is_ the murderous creature now." The words hurt. Everything hurts. "And now we're going to have to box him. Why couldn't he have just stayed away?"

"I think we both know why, Eliot." Julia gently replies. Eliot flinches, looking away. This is one hell of a heavy conversation for this early in the morning.

"I should have boxed him before. Bambi nearly died."

"Yeah, and you saved her. You think I don't play the 'I should' game? I should never have cast that revenge spell with Marina – I tortured my supposed best friend with his worst fears and nearly drove him insane. I should have let Alice stab the Beast when she had the chance – if she hadn't still been juiced up, you'd be dead right now. I should have let Penny take the Beast without a fuss – because Quentin saved me, your trap failed and Alice ended up a niffin. Should I carry on?"

Eliot shakes his head. Julia's eyes are soft as she reaches out and takes his hand in his. "If it's worth anything, I don't think I could have boxed him either. I've already watched him die in front of me in two different timelines; I don't think I have it in me to watch him die a third time, however weak a shadow this version is."

Eliot regards her steadily, twisting his hand so that he can grip hers back. "You're good at this."

"At what?"

"At talking absolute messes out of their heads. You have this...knack...of empathising without making it all about you."

Julia shrugs.

"Years of experience with Q, I guess. And you're not so bad yourself, really." At Eliot's blank look, Julia shakes her head fondly. "I seem to remember a certain Magician peeling me off the couch to come save Fillory with him just to 'kill a few birds'."

"Ah."

They sit in silence for a minute, holding hands without speaking. Until, finally, Eliot just can't hold it in anymore.

"Are you and 23 a thing? Because seriously, no one helps another person this much without wanting to bang them."

Julia snorts derisively, though Eliot can detect the faintest dusting of pink across her cheeks.

"No, we're not a thing."

"But you want to be, right?"

"It's...complicated."

"You mean Kady." Eliot surmises. Judging from Julia's flinch, he's hit the nail on the head.

"It just seems...tactless."

"The man is already trailing after you with stars in his eyes. If you're trying to spare her feelings, I promise you: that ship has already sailed. And besides, Kady's a strong girl. Don't you think she'd have said something by now if she had a problem with it?"

"I just..."

"Julia." Eliot interjects, leaning forwards. "I fucked up my chance with Quentin and then lost him. Don't be me, okay?"

Julia stares at him open-mouthed before swallowing and nodding slightly.

Later, Eliot finds Julia leaning back against Penny as they laugh together and peruse the cupboards for dinner. He backs up quickly, making a rapid exit from the kitchen area, and wraps an arm about Josh's shoulders before the other man can bounce in and ruin everything.

At breakfast the next morning, Penny and Julia are all over each other. Not in any physical way – they're not quite that thoughtless – but in that smiley, overly flirtatious way that leaves no one in the room with any doubt that the pair hooked up last night. Despite his encouraging words to Julia the morning before, Eliot sneaks a quick glance at Kady to check on her reaction. She doesn't seem outwardly bothered, though she does make an even speedier exit from breakfast than usual. Eliot feels a small stab of guilt, but smothers it – he has done far worse things recently than encourage a couple to stop dancing around each other.

Margo still won't talk to him properly, but she's now dialled him back from frosty silence to clipped, monosyllabic words. She even rewards him with a faint smile when he makes a particularly cutting remark about Todd as they all reminisce about simpler times. At this rate, Eliot estimates that they'll be back to normal within a day or so.

Quentin hasn't reappeared yet, making Eliot wonder if he heard Eliot telling him they were done. Which seems a little too easy, but hey. Eliot has no idea how a niffin's brain works. Maybe he's just bored of hanging around Eliot by now, or is smart enough to know that he will probably be walking into a trap if he appears after catapulting Margo off the balcony. Part of Eliot entertains fantasies of this being it - maybe if Quentin never comes back, the others won't insist on boxing him – but at the same time knows it's an unlikely outcome. Quentin signed his own warrant the night he tipped over the edge of sadism into murder.

It's four days after the balcony incident, the magic on Margo's wrist having finally cleared away the bruising, when there's a knock at the door. It's Eliot who gets up to answer it: Julia and Penny are being sickeningly sweet in the corner whilst making a pitiful effort at researching with the new books they acquired yesterday; Kady is off somewhere with Margo, setting terror into the hearts of mere mortals everywhere; Josh is elbow-deep in his latest culinary creation and looks like he might cry if he has to abandon his baby halfway through.

Eliot's not expecting anyone and has already decided it must be a delivery person or wrong address situation. Which is why it's such a shock to swing the door open and come face-to-face with black framed glasses and blonde hair straightened to within an inch of its life.

"I got your note." Alice says simply, waving the unfolded (and now horribly stained – Eliot shudders to think what it went through to get to her) paper. Wordless, Eliot steps aside and lets her enter.

The clomp of her blocky heels on the floorboards seem exceptionally loud in the empty space, echoing strangely about the walls and vanishing somewhere around the high ceiling. Eliot had forgotten that odd way of walking she has – all brisk, tiny steps, as if she's going to topple over at any given moment – and is so focused on that that he nearly misses the fact that she's holding a fairly large bag in her right hand.

Alice must catch his expression at seeing it, because she just shrugs and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear self-consciously.

"I wasn't sure how long I'd be here. Your note didn't really give many details."

"Ah."

From what Eliot can recall, he scribbled something appropriately vague like 'Bad situation. Need your help. Come to the apartment. From Eliot.' So perhaps he can't exactly blame her for coming prepared for anything.

"I'm not expecting to stay here, if this takes a while. I can find a hotel." Alice reassures them, uncomfortably hugging herself with her free arm. Over in the corner, Julia snorts.

"You bet you can."

"Now, children." Eliot chastises, wading in before things can get nasty. "We're all adults here." He shoots Alice as warm a smile as he can manage and is rewarded with a tentative smile of her own. "I'm sure we can find a space for you."

It won't be quite as easy as Eliot is making out: they're officially out of rooms, which means either one of their resident couples is going to have to move in together or they're finally going to have to clear out Quentin's space. But the relieved loosening of tension in Alice's shoulders tells him that he said the right thing.

"Thank you. And...congratulations on being Monster-free. I was surprised to see your name on the note. Surprised and pleased, I mean. You didn't deserve to be possessed like that. Not that anyone does, but..." She closes her eyes, trailing off. "Sorry. I don't really know what to say in this sort of situation."

"I don't think Hallmark has cornered the market on this yet, so feel free to say whatever you want." Eliot reassures her. He can see Julia rolling her eyes over Alice's shoulder, but chooses to ignore her.

"Right. So, um, how did you manage it? Getting the Monster out of you, I mean?" Her awkward smile brightens into something real as she glances about the apartment. "Was it Quentin? Is he here? He must have been so relieved to get you back – it was all he could focus on after you let us know you were alive in there."

Oh. Oh, _shit_. 

Somehow, in the rush of everything, Eliot had forgotten that they decided not to contact Alice after Quentin burned. Alice hadn't even known that Eliot was free until she got his note. And now they're going to have to somehow break the news that her ex-boyfriend has been gone for months now and no one bothered to tell her.

"Alice..." It's Julia, standing just a few feet away from them and looking a heck of a lot more sympathetic than she did just a few moments ago. "Quentin is...Quentin's dead."

Alice's bag drops to the floor.

"Wh-what?" Her right arm flails for purchase and Eliot quickly moves to support her just in case. "He can't...he didn't...what happened?"

Her eyes are shining now, filling up with tears that begin to spill over and drip down her cheeks. She claps a hand to her mouth in a useless attempt to muffle the ragged sobs beginning to escape there.

Eliot turns his head away, unable to watch.

"The spell that saved Eliot...it was too much for him, Alice. The magic burned through him." Julia explains haltingly. Alice shudders in Eliot's grip.

"He...he niffined out? Why didn't...why didn't anyone _tell_ me?"

"You weren't around. And quite frankly, none of us cared enough to track you down for that conversation." Penny says brusquely from the corner. Wincing, Eliot turns back to face Alice's reaction. It's bound to be a bad one and they undoubtedly deserve whatever she throws at them.

"I...I get that. I do." Huh. Not what Eliot was expecting. Alice peers up at him, expression young and vulnerable.

"You boxed him, didn't you?" She says quietly. Eliot flinches.

"No. Not yet."

"Not...yet?"

"That's what we need you for. He's been hanging around Waugh and we need to find a way of summoning him to a place other than where he transformed." Penny jumps in.

Alice frowns, roughly rubbing her face dry with her coat sleeve and pulling herself free of Eliot's supportive grip.

"But that doesn't make sense. Niffins don't haunt people. Not unless they've been stuffed into someone's tattoo."

"Well, whatever the reason, we need to box him." Penny shrugs.

"But..."

"He tried to kill Margo a few nights ago." Eliot chokes out, still hearing the echoes of her shriek in his mind. "Just grabbed her by the wrist and threw her off the balcony."

"Oh God..." Alice stares at him, expression disbelieving. "Still...we can just get his Shade back, save him like he did for me..."

"We looked everywhere for a solution." Julia disagrees, looking broken at the reminder. "There's no way to get a Shade out of the Underworld without a god's intervention and we have no way of getting enough juice to power the spell."

Alice's mouth firms. She bends down to rifle through her bag, emerging with two thick books and a highlighter. Her eyes flash determinedly as she looks around the group.

"You didn't have me before."

* * *

Alice spends the rest of the day occupying the coffee table, alternating between being sat primly on the couch and kneeling on the floor. At some point she co-opts Josh as book boy and soon has the older Magician scurrying all over the apartment, digging out various tomes and grimoires and bringing them back to her. By the time Margo and Kady return, she's barely visible behind the veritable wall of books she has built around her.

"Huh. So she came after all." Margo observes, leaning against the counter next to Eliot. He starts as she presses up against him; it's their first physical contact in days. Glancing down at her, he finds her blinking innocently up at him as if she isn't fully aware of how much this means to him.

Carefully sliding an arm about her shoulder, he smiles when she lets out a small sigh and relaxes into the touch.

"Unsurprisingly, she wasn't a fan about boxing Quentin. She thinks she can find a way to save him." He murmurs. Margo tenses, twisting her head to shoot him a worried look.

"El, honey...I don't want you to get your hopes up. Not now, not after you've only just..."

"I'm not. I...I know now, Margo. I know we can't save him. But I figure she needs to realise that for herself before she'll help us box him."

"Right. Sure. That's...good." Margo presses a kiss to his collarbone through his shirt, settling back against him.

"Of course, that means we're going to have to work something out about bedrooms. I was thinking maybe it was time we cleared..."

"She can stay in Josh's room. No, scratch that – mine. No girl deserves his sloppy seconds."

"My, my, Bambi." Eliot teases, keeping his voice low and amused even as he watches Josh scamper across to the bookshelves and start delving through the volumes on the bottom shelf. "Are you actually admitting to catching feelings? Moving in together is a big step, you know."

"Shut up." Margo swats him, glaring at him.

"I'm serious. You won't be able to pretend this is just one big hook-up anymore. The whole world will know that you and Hoberman are a thing." Eliot avoids Margo's next swipe, ducking back and taking refuge against the opposite counter, laughing as she mimes cutting off something very precious to him.

"Whatever. It won't be for long anyway, so it makes sense." She snaps, before freezing in place. Eliot blinks, leaning forward.

"Margo?"

She swallows, eyes darting everywhere except his face. Eliot notices that her knuckles are white where she's gripping the countertop.

"Josh and I think it's time to go back to Fillory."

"Oh."

The world screeches to a halt around Eliot. Suddenly the ground beneath his feet falls away and he's left dangling over the precipice, scrabbling for a handhold that will keep him from plummeting to certain doom. _It's not fair_ , a small voice cries inside of him. _You just made up with her and now you're losing her again_.

"Is it because..."

"Of Q? No. It takes more than that to break me. But I'm High King, Eliot. And I've let my duties slide for too long." She's watching him worriedly now, like he's some sort of fragile teacup teetering on the edge of a shelf. Truth be told, he doesn't feel all too different from that right now. "Are you okay?"

"Okay? Of course I'm okay!" He says shrilly. "Why wouldn't I be okay, Margo?"

"I don't know, maybe because you're paler than Putin's ballsack?" She snaps. Folding her arms, she leans back against the counter and gives him a thoroughly unimpressed look. "You knew this was coming."

"Yes, but I thought I had more time!"

"Time to do what? Mope around the apartment? Drink your way through our stash? See more of New York's finest? Our kingdom needs us, El!"

"Wait." Eliot stops, raising a finger. "You said 'our' kingdom."

"Obviously. You may not be High King anymore, but I figured you still wanted to help rule it. Or was I wrong about that too?"

"Margo..."

"You don't have to come if you don't want to, you know." Margo sniffs, trying to look blasé and failing. Eliot chuckles and shakes his head.

" _Bambi_. I thought you meant you and Josh were going back alone." He explains. Margo stares at him like he's an idiot.

"Why in the name of all things Fillory would we do that?"

"I don't know! Couple time? Politics? Underlying rage from me putting you all in danger?"

Margo rolls her eyes, waving a hand. "Oh, please. Done and dusted. Sometimes a girl just needs a little time to be mad. And as for the rest...politics, I can kinda see, but _couple time_? Have you _met_ me, Eliot?!"

Okay, point to Margo. He may have been catastrophising a little.

"And besides," She continues. "Do you think Fen would forgive me if I turned up without you? She'd barely started to grieve you before Penny came to get me because they'd freed you from the Monster. She's going to be stuck to your side 24/7 for the next few weeks, you do know that right?"

Eliot smiles fondly. It perhaps shouldn't have been such a surprise to him that of everything Fillorian he misses Fen the most.

"What about the Library? And boxing Quentin?"

"They can send a bunny if they need us. Or Penny." Margo grabs him by the chin, shaking his head a little. "We're not doing anything meaningful here and I, for one, can't stand sitting around with my thumb up my twat any longer. Fillory needs us. _Fen_ needs us. You in?"

Eliot grins, planting a kiss on her forehead with a loud smack. "When do we leave?"

* * *

The decision to switch his focus to Fillory for a while gives Eliot a sense of purpose he's been lacking for far too long. The cocktails he makes for everyone that evening are easy on the alcohol and heavy on the flavour, a burnt sunset colour so gorgeous that even Alice, her nose still stuck in a book, accepts one. Margo claims they need more guava but she has no taste when it comes to drinking, so what does she know?

As he gets ready for bed that night, he feels calm and collected in a way that he hasn't been in months. For the first time in what seems like forever, Eliot slips into his nightclothes with a feeling of hope for the next day rather than the unfolding curl of dread that has been omnipresent in his life. The apartment is mostly dark as he pours himself a glass of water, the others having retired to bed a short while before him. He nods at Penny as the other man emerges from his room on what looks to be a very similar quest, leaving him to it as he heads back to his own bedroom. It's a thoroughly unremarkable, positively routine evening.

And then, just before his door shuts, Eliot hears Penny swear colourfully and drop his tumbler into the sink. And he _knows_.

Part of him wants to just ignore it. His hand clutches the door knob like a lifeline, trembling with the urge to close it behind him and shut out what he's almost positive is going on out there. But another part, a larger part, just can't do it.

He sighs. Placing his water down on his bedside table, he returns to the living area and is greeted with exactly the sight he was expecting to see: Quentin loitering on the balcony and Penny frozen in the kitchen.

What he wasn't expecting was the flash of rage that burns through him when Quentin notices his presence and starts waving cheerily at him. He storms across the room, ignoring Penny's wary "Hey, Waugh..." and stopping mere centimetres in front of the glass.

"No. I told you to fuck off. We are _done_ , Quentin. You don't get to come here anymore."

Quentin blinks at him, tilting his head until his hair slides in front of his face and he's left with only a single flat blue eye to observe Eliot with.

"You're mad at me."

"Jesus fucking _Christ_ , of course I'm mad at you! You nearly killed Margo!"

"Oh. Are you still on about that?" Quentin rolls his eyes. "I thought I gave you enough time to calm down."

"Time to... _what_?! You thought that I'd just move on from you trying to murder my best friend in a few days?"

"She tried to kill me too. You keep forgetting that part."

"No, she didn't. Because you, despite all appearances to the contrary, are _dead_. The bits of you that mattered, anyway. All that's left is this cruel, selfish monster and I want nothing more to do with it."

Quentin frowns. The hand he was resting on the door begins to twitch, middle finger tapping lightly against the glass.

"You don't mean that."

"Yes, I do. I want to move on. We can't save you-"

"I don't _need_ saving!"

"-so now all that's left is for me to let you go."

"No." Quentin steps back from the door, his eyes searching Eliot's face for sign of a lie. He steps forward, then back, then to the side, seemingly unsure of where to stand or what to do. Several times he opens his mouth as if to say something, only to shut it and knock his clenched fists against his forehead, visibly agitated.

"What the..." Eliot hears Penny breathe from the kitchen. He ignores him, too caught up in the scene in front of him to reply. Because this? This is nothing he's seen from Niffin Quentin before. The other night, when he had Eliot pinned up against the wall, that was pure, brilliant rage. This?

This looks an awful lot like pain.

Swallowing, he tightens his resolve. 

"We're d..."

"No!" Quentin howls, slamming both of his hands against the glass. It looks less like violence and more like desperation. "Don't say that!"

Eliot's eyes are burning. All the rage he felt has melted away, leaving only a confusing mass of hurt and grief roiling in his gut. This isn't what he thought it would be.

"Goodbye, Quentin." He manages, turning to go. He's barely gone a step when Quentin speaks again, voice quiet.

"You're running again."

Eliot turns to find Quentin leaning against the door, his ice-cold eyes burning into Eliot.

"What?"

"You're running again, just like you did before. Like you always do. Shame there are no peaches to soften the blow this time."

Eliot flinches and Quentin presses his advantage, a cruel smile curving its way across his lips.

"It was all real, you know. It happened. I went and found Teddy's grave."

"Stop it."

"I found his children's graves too. Traced all their descendants to the villages around the cottage, each and every one of them."

"Stop..."

"They look like him. Teddy, I mean. They have his smile, and his eyes, and his..."

"Stop it, Quentin!" Eliot doubles over, pain lancing through him. It's suddenly hard to breathe. "Please. Just stop. Don't use Teddy like that."

"Why not?" Quentin taunts him.

"Because he's our son!" Eliot is barely aware of the sharp intake of breath behind him. All he can focus on right now is the jagged core of agony tearing its way through his soft tissues. The hand reaching up inside of him and squeezing his heart into dust.

"So? What does that matter?" Quentin surveys Eliot for a moment, a victorious king looking down on his quarry. He snorts. "You make it so easy to hurt you. You're pathetic."

Something inside Eliot snaps.

" _You're_ the one who keeps coming back when you have a whole universe to explore." He shoots back, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction when Quentin's eyes fly wide. "Face it, Q. You're lonely."

For a moment, nothing happens. It's like they're frozen in time, a silent tableau on the wall of some museum.

In the foreground: The Niffin, body stiff, expression disbelieving. The Petitioner, on his knees, triumphant in defeat.

In the background: The Observer, lost to the shadows, forgotten witness to this theatre.

And then time rushes back in and Quentin _explodes_.

Letting out a wordless bellow of fury, Quentin erupts into a beacon of blue so bright that Eliot has to shield his eyes. By the time the light has died down enough to look, the pair of chairs they keep out there for smoke breaks are melted wrecks of twisted metal and almost completely unrecognisable. Eliot squints past the lingering after-images obscuring his vision, watching in mute dismay as Quentin places his hands on the most intact of the two and roars with rage, the metal glowing white hot at his touch and shrinking down to nothing more than a puddle of molten aluminium on the floor. Still not done, the niffin hurls the remaining lump of chair at the balcony doors, summoning it back only to throw it again, and again, and again.

"What the _hell_." Eliot hears from somewhere behind, closely followed by a small, stifled sob in a lighter register. The others must have woken up. Not surprising, considering the riot Quentin is throwing out there.

Glancing back, he sees that the others have gathered in the kitchen by Penny. Josh is frantically rifling through the drawers while Margo stares at the scene before her in wide-eyed horror, a hand clamped to her face. Perhaps unsurprisingly it's Alice who's crying, clearly caught off-guard by her first glimpse of Quentin as a niffin. Julia has her wrapped in her arms, grudge forgotten as she watches her best friend's crazed eruption with watery eyes. Kady has braced herself to throw a magic missile if needed, dressed in a matching set of Mickey Mouse pyjamas and still the most intimidating thing in the room.

As Eliot watches, Josh lets out a 'hah!' of victory and brandishes his newly found rolling pin. He's about to comment on the idiocy of whatever plan the Naturalist has concocted when he suddenly realises that the thudding has stopped.

Slowly turning back, he blinks at the sight of Quentin standing in front of the door, the niffin panting for breath he doesn't need and every inch of him trembling with exertion. There's one long moment of eye contact before Quentin's face twists and he's gone, rocketing up into the sky in a brilliant streak of blue.

Eliot slumps over, suddenly drained and empty now that the adrenaline of the situation is over. Pressing his forehead against the cool laminate, he's caught off-guard when a warm hand tentatively touches his shoulder and even more surprised when he heaves himself upright only to find it's Penny of all people.

"You okay, man?" The Traveller asks quietly. Eliot shrugs, letting the other man clasp his hand and pull him to his feet. Margo is there in an instant, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest.

"What did you _say_ to him?" She demands, muffled but still just about audible. Eliot shivers, hugging her back.

"I told him to fuck off. He didn't like that and things got a little..." He pauses, eyeing the ruins of their outdoors furniture. "...heated."

Margo kicks him lightly, tilting her head up to glare at him. "Puns? Really? At a time like this?"

"I thought niffins weren't meant to care about other people, but you should have seen the way Coldwater looked when Eliot said they were done." Penny remarks. "It was like his world was ending."

"But that doesn't make any sense. Niffins _don't_ care about people." Alice says. She's standing on her own again now, the only sign she's been crying a slight blotchiness about the eyes. Crossing the room to where Eliot is standing, she rests her hand against the glass door and purses her lips in thought. "Humans are just...insects to them."

She turns her head to frown at Eliot, eyeing him like a specimen under the microscope. "You haven't told me everything, have you?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You just said that Quentin had gone after Margo. You didn't say anything about him showing any sort of emotional attachment to you." She freezes, clicking her fingers and turning to face Penny. "You said something about him hanging around Eliot and like an idiot I didn't even think anything of it because it was such a Quentin thing to do."

"And?" Over in the kitchen, Kady is crossing her arms and looking thoroughly unimpressed with Alice's Miss Marple moment.

"Don't you see?" Alice asks, looking at all of them and gesturing in frustration when she gets nothing but blank stares in return. "Wanting to spend time with Eliot is such a _Quentin_ thing to do."

Julia suddenly sucks in a breath. "Urges like that should have burned up with the rest of him. You think there's something left of him in there."

Nodding, Alice focuses the little light there is in the room and uses it to navigate across to where she left her research earlier, flicking through the books in search of something in particular. Her hands are glowing. Kady just rolls her eyes and hits the apartment lights, making them all wince as they're temporarily blinded.

"When I was a niffin, the last thing I wanted to do was wallow in my old life. If Quentin's cacodemon hadn't stuffed me into his tattoo, I'd have been long gone. The fact that Quentin's been actively _choosing_ to hang around? That's not what a niffin does."

"So...what? That niffin is just Q having a bad day?" Margo asks sceptically. "You saw him out there: he was pure psycho. He's burnt Julia on purpose, he tried to _kill_ me...I don't know what you're thinking, but there's no way that's our supernerd."

Alice shrugs, throwing her book to the side and grabbing another one.

"I don't know _what_ I think right now." She glances up at Eliot, brow furrowed. "Tell me everything that's happened. I need to know what he's been like with you."

"Well, the first thing he did was crash his own wake, torment us, and try to burn Julia to a crisp." Kady drawls. Eliot rubs a hand over his face. He feels exhausted.

"He said he wanted to check I was okay. That was why he came."

Alice hums. "And then?"

"He started leaving me notes on my window. Little comments and pictures that linked to memories we had together. He followed me a couple of times as well."

"Was that it?"

"No. He...started turning up in person. Only a few times. We'd talk while no one else was there, though we normally ended up arguing."

"Hmmm." Alice marks a passage with a sticky note and makes a grab for yet another tome. "And did he ever try to hurt you during these arguments?"

"I didn't leave the wards. The one time I did...he pinned me against the wall when he got angry at me for bringing up Julia's burns, but he didn't do anything. He just let me go."

Alice pauses. "That was it?"

"Yes. Well...he turned off all the lights in the city and made the stars fall as a late birthday present." Eliot is flushing, aware that nearly everyone in the apartment is staring at him now. He hadn't exactly fully explained the situation to anyone before – he'd just said he was talking with Quentin on the balcony when the whole Margo thing went down. "And he gave the hospitals back their power when I asked too."

"What Eliot _isn't_ saying is that before I went out to box him and nearly ended up flatbread," Margo says dryly, "I found them holding hands and staring into each other's eyes."

Alice stills, her frantic turning of pages dying away to nothing. Eliot winces. It suddenly feels like yesterday that she was walking in to find her boyfriend curled up in bed naked with him and Margo.

"Right." Alice coughs, moving past it. "And that was the last time you saw him before tonight? When you told him to, I quote, 'fuck off' and he flipped out?"

"Waugh told Coldwater he was done with him. Coldwater freaked out, got catty and tried to hurt Waugh in return. Waugh pointed out how weird it was that Coldwater was still hanging around and suggested he was lonely. Cue psycho niffin fit and the loss of our outdoor furniture." Penny summarises.

"Very succinct. Have you thought about a job writing TV show recaps?" Josh asks. He shuts up when Penny glares at him.

"See, this is what I'm talking about. Niffins just don't care like that about what people say to them – all of that emotion just burns away with their Shade. If Quentin cares enough to keep coming back...to be wounded by Eliot creating distance between them...then something different happened during his initial transformation."

"Why Eliot though? He clearly doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone else." Penny points out. Alice bites her lip.

"When I niffined out fighting the Beast, my last thought was vengeance. All that pain he'd caused, all that death...Quentin was bleeding out on the ground in front of me and I wanted the Beast to pay for that. Then when I came back..." She stops, flinching. Margo sighs, gesturing for her to continue.

"You tried to kill me, Q, and Eliot. Trust me, we remember. But how does that link to...oh." For the first time, Margo looks slightly uncomfortable. "Because of the threesome."

In the background, Josh spits out the soda he's been helping himself to. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

No one bothers replying, though Eliot notices Julia mouthing something to herself, wide-eyed. If he didn't know any better, he'd think it was his name.

If Margo looks uncomfortable at the memory of their betrayal, Alice looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up. Her knuckles are white with the force of her grip on the book.

"Exactly. I killed the Beast and then turned on you all because you hurt me when I was human. The same thing happened when Quentin went to my memorial – I took the chance to make my parents suffer for my shitty childhood."

"So you're saying that the last thought you had as a human was your driving force as a niffin." Kady says slowly. "You just wanted revenge. So how come Q..."

"It's all he ever talked about." Julia murmurs, interrupting. "Saving Eliot, rescuing Eliot, getting revenge for Eliot...if I ever questioned what he was doing, all he'd say was 'It's Eliot' as if that was some kind of answer. I think to him it was."

 _You're Eliot._ Suddenly, Eliot vividly recalls the words Quentin said to him when he demanded to know what made him different from other humans. At the time, Eliot had been too concerned with Margo and what had nearly just happened to analyse the words particularly closely. He remembers thinking even then that it had felt like the answer had meant something to Quentin, as if the words themselves were just code for something else. Now, thinking back, he can picture the confused frown Quentin made as he said it.

Like Quentin himself didn't fully understand it either. Like he'd lost access to whatever layers had once been hidden behind the response. Had Quentin just been reliving an echo of the past? Or had he truly known what he was saying?

Julia is still speaking. With difficulty, Eliot drags himself out of his introspective monologuing and forces himself to pay attention.

"It all makes sense now. Of course Quentin's niffin is obsessed with Eliot. His last words were asking me to look after Eliot for him. His last thought was _Eliot_."

As one, they all turn to look at Eliot. Ducking his head as guilt wells up inside him all over again, he wishes desperately for a glass of wine. Or whiskey. He'd even take schnapps at this point, god help him. He'd already known that Quentin died for him – he doesn't need it laid out for him in black and white.

" _I didn't ask for this_." He snarls. The world is suspiciously blurry to him right now and he has a horrible feeling that everyone can see exactly why. "I didn't ask for Q to sacrifice himself for me and I certainly didn't ask to be haunted by an obsessed niffin who's one step away from boiling the messenger bunnies."

"El, honey...no one's saying you did." Margo soothes, reaching up to smooth his hair off his forehead. Eliot shudders, bending down to hide his face in her shoulder.

"I can't take this anymore, Bambi." He mutters desperately into her neck. "Every time I think I'm close to getting closure, something happens and it all starts hurting all over again."

"Shhh. It'll end soon." Margo pauses, shooting Alice a pointed glare. "I mean, it _will_ end soon, right? It's not like you became the living embodiment of vengeance. As soon as Q released you you fucked off into the ether and didn't come back until your Shade drew you to Brakebills South. Or were you still running around getting revenge for that time little Johnny Perkins pulled your pigtails in first grade?"

If looks could kill, Margo would be at least seriously wounded by now. Alice looks like she's seriously contemplating battering her to death with the huge leather-bound grimoire she's holding.

"No. I was off exploring what it meant to be pure magic and treating the world like my personal playground. The initial drive for revenge faded not long after my memorial."

"So if we wait things out Quentin will just get bored and leave us alone?" Josh checks. Alice shakes her head.

"That's what's so weird about this. It's been months. Any impulses left over from his initial transformation should have gone by now."

"And that's why you think something of Quentin survived." Julia surmises. There's hope starting to burn in her eyes now, something fragile and broken starting to reform there. It makes Eliot feel sick. And yet...

Hadn't it only been a few days ago that he was sat almost exactly where Alice is, leafing through the same books and coming up with his own very similar theories? Hadn't he himself been pondering Quentin's oddly emotional reactions to his words and thinking there must be something different going on beneath the surface? After Quentin's attempt to kill Margo he'd pushed those ideas away and decided he was being stupid, but if an ex-niffin agrees...

"I think we have two potential causes for his behaviour." Alice says calmly. "One: for some reason Quentin is still caught in the impulse to see Eliot again that caused his initial transformation. Possible, but not something I've heard of happening before. And if that's what's happened, then something triggered it."

"And the second?" Penny frowns. Alice purses her lips, opening her book to a startlingly vivid woodcut image of a human being wreathed in flames, something round and smooth disintegrating inside them.

"Two: not all of Quentin's Shade burned away. It's not his final thoughts as a human that are driving his actions; it's whatever remnants of empathy and affection he has left manifesting as an obsession with one of the people he was closest to in life."

"Either way, something went wrong with the transformation." Julia breathes. "So if we can unpick that..."

"...then we can maybe find a loophole and get his Shade back." Alice finishes. The two women share a fleeting look, Alice's eyebrows lifting and Julia's head jerking in a tiny nod. Even if the rest of them disagree, Eliot realises, they've just made a pact to see this through to the end.

Margo grips his hand tightly and he lifts his head to see her worried expression. She's afraid of what this means for him. Yet even underneath her concern he can detect a flicker of doubt, a reconsideration of what their next move should be if part of Quentin really has survived.

"One month." Kady's voice rings out across the apartment, authoritative and commanding. As one, they all turn to look at her. She raises an eyebrow, crossing her arms and cocking a hip carelessly. "Unless he tries anything, I say we give ourselves one more month to find a solution. And then that's it." She glances around the group, her eyes lingering on Eliot, Alice and Julia. "We can't afford to trap ourselves in No Man's Land again. It's not healthy."

The group stare at each other silently. They're all waiting for someone to disagree, Eliot realises. They never accept decisions straight away. There's always someone who has to...

"Well, I think..." Penny begins and Eliot internally rolls his eyes. He should have guessed it would be the psychic that spoke out. He's never been subtle about his suspicion of Quentin and that was before the whole niffin thing went down.

"...that it's a good plan." Penny finishes. Everyone stares at him and he sighs in exasperation. "What, you think I don't want to save him if there's a way? Just how much of a dick do you think I am?"

No one replies, but there is a strong sense of _a raging one_ silently emanating from the group. 

"Right. Now that that's decided, how's about we all go back to bed? We can't do anything now and Momma needs her beauty sleep." Margo proclaims. "Some of us will be fighting world-lag tomorrow and _some_ of us," Her eyes cut to Penny, who looks surly at the sudden and pointed attention, "need to be awake enough to travel without ending up in a volcano."

"I keep telling you, I'm not your personal taxi!" He exclaims. Margo snorts, leaving Eliot's side to pat Penny's cheek patronisingly before sauntering off back to her and Josh's room.

"Keep telling yourself that, Travis." She calls over her shoulder. Penny throws up his arms, looking like a man who thinks he's the only sane person in a bunch of crazies. It's an expression he wears often around them.

" _Who_?!"

"Travis Bickle. From, um, _Taxi Driver_? It's an incredibly influential film, Scorsese really manages to..." Josh's words die away as Penny turns to stare at him incredulously. Wisely deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, he scampers off after Margo.

One by one, the group scatters back to their rooms. Eliot leaves Alice to pile up her leftover research on the table and seeks his own sanctuary, sinking down on his plush violet covers and tiredly rubbing a hand over his face. At this rate he'll be good for nothing tomorrow. Knowing Margo, she'll probably punish him by forcing him to deal with Tick all day while she goes around actually getting things done.

There's a quiet knock at his door and he looks up, blinking, to see an oddly hesitant Penny hovering in the doorway.

"Hey, man. Do you mind if I..." His voice trails away and he gestures helplessly into Eliot's room. Bemused, Eliot waves him in and shifts up the bed in case Penny wants to sit down.

Penny doesn't, choosing instead to pace awkwardly up and down the small space. Eliot is just about to press him for whatever he's come here to say when Penny suddenly comes to a stop and whirls to face Eliot.

"I shouldn't have called you sick."

Shouldn't have called him...? Oh. Their argument over breakfast. Eliot had almost forgotten, though it looks like Penny hasn't.

"I thought you were just being stupid and indulging yourself. I didn't realise what he was really like."

"What, violent and unstable?" Eliot says bitterly. Penny pauses, frowning.

"No. Well, that too. I meant...the way he seemed so human." He huffs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "When you told him you wanted nothing to do with you, I thought for a minute he was going to drop to his knees and beg you for another chance. I guess what I'm trying to say is that...I understand now why you did it. You were seeing a side to him that we didn't get to see after he burned."

"So you don't just think I..."

"I'd have done it too," Penny cuts in before Eliot can finish his scathing self-barb, "if I thought that Julia was still in there. Either one of them."

Eliot ducks his head, gripping the covers. He thinks about Quentin's stunned dismay at being told to go and the furious rage that had followed. He tries to picture Julia doing the same, with Penny the one on his knees before her, and somehow can't.

"Come on, man. Say something. I can only handle so much feelings talk." Penny complains. When Eliot doesn't reply he sighs, leaning back against the wall. "Who's Teddy?"

Eliot flinches. He'd forgotten Quentin had dropped that little bomb in front of Penny earlier.

"Seriously, Waugh – what did you mean when you said he was your son?"

"Exactly what I said." Eliot says dully. He doesn't meet Penny's eyes. Can't bring himself to try. "The quest for the Time Key involved enough time fuckery for me and Q to live out a whole life in some past version of Fillory that never existed."

From the way he can see Penny's bare feet shifting on the carpet, the other man is filling in the gaps even if Eliot isn't in the mood to elaborate. It doesn't take a genius to put together Eliot's reaction to Quentin's death with how Quentin was apparently behaving when Eliot was possessed and come up with a very clear idea of exactly what kind of life he and Quentin led in the other timeline. There's no way now that Penny can just brush the idea of a son away as some kind of last resort Fillorian fostering that was dropped on a pair of friends. 

"Do the others know?" Penny asks eventually. Eliot shrugs.

"Margo does, to some extent."

"You should tell Alice." Eliot's head shoots up and he stares at Penny, betrayed. Penny groans. "Jesus, not because she and Coldwater were a thing! Because of her research. What if that timeline's the reason he's all screwy now?"

Eliot mulls it over. It's not a bad theory, all things considered. But the thought of telling Alice exactly what he spent fifty years doing with her ex-boyfriend is slightly terrifying, especially since the whole reason they broke up in the first place involved Quentin and Eliot taking their friendship far further than they should have while Alice was still in the picture.

When Eliot doesn't say anything, Penny just sighs and goes to leave. "Whatever, dude. I need to get some sleep before Margo castrates me tomorrow."

He's almost out the door when Eliot finds his voice. "Penny?"

The other man stops, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Eliot squirms, feeling oddly like he's exposing his soft underbelly. "Thanks."

Penny regards him silently for a moment, face expressionless.

"Sure, man."

And then he's gone.

* * *

Margo is doing battle with her suitcase when Eliot goes to find her the next morning. Even with the telltale warping of Ginau's Compression Charm, the case is still straining to close around the sheer mountain of clothes Margo is attempting to cram in there. It seems an odd decision, considering that as soon as she arrives she'll change into one of her spectacular royal gowns, but Eliot learnt long ago not to question Margo on her packing choices. Their first Encanto Oculto and the legendary screaming fit he'd provoked in the lead-up to it that year had taught him that.

Josh's single bag is already packed and ready to go, placed neatly in the corner along with a small box of cooking implements Josh found in Marina's kitchen and clearly can't quite stand to leave behind. From the sounds of Josh rummaging around in the cupboards out there, the group's chef is making the most of his last opportunity to use a modern kitchen for a while.

Eliot lingers in the doorway, his mouth dry. His own bag is meant to be packed and resting beside Josh's by now

"You're not coming with us, are you?" Margo says quietly, giving up on wrestling the zipper closed. Eliot hasn't said anything and Margo hasn't turned around, yet she still knows the sound of his footsteps well enough to know exactly who's behind her and what Eliot's face probably looks like. "You're going to stay here."

Eliot bites his lip. "I can't leave when Alice is searching for a solution. Not when this is all because of me."

"Martyrdom is a poor look for you." Margo's mouth is set, a challenge in her eyes. Eliot sighs.

"We both know he'd do the same for me." _And did_ , goes unspoken between them, the knowledge of Quentin's tireless research whilst Margo was in Fillory lying heavy and weighty in the air. "And besides, haven't you heard? 3rd century martyrs are very chic right now. I should get myself a shapeless tunic made out of rough wool."

"Don't you dare. You haven't got the torso for it." Margo retorts. She rests her hands on her hips and considers him, mouth twisted. "You've made up your mind. I can tell."

Eliot doesn't reply, just matching her gaze with a steady one of his own. She's the first to break, sighing and walking across the room to where Eliot is hesitating like a vampire unable to enter without an invitation.

"Look out for yourself." She says, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. "Coldwater is special, but not as special as you."

"Debatable."

"That's not what he'd say, and you know it. I'll try and poke around in Fillory once we have everything settled there. Maybe they have something on niffins that we don't."

"Thank you, Bambi." Eliot means it. She's gone through so much for him these past few months – more than any friend should be expected to do, no matter how close. Whether it's mourning his apparent death, holding his hand through his own grieving or just continuing to prioritise his wellbeing over everything else, she's already done more than Eliot can ever repay her for.

"You know Fen is going to be a nightmare the next time she sees you." Margo warns, raising her eyebrows. "You're just putting off the inevitable smothering."

Eliot winces. He hadn't considered that aspect.

"It's a risk I'm going to have to take. Tell her I'll see her soon, yeah?"

Margo snorts, finally managing to zip her case shut with a little 'hah!' of triumph. "If you think you're getting out of this without numerous messenger bunnies in your immediate future, you're even more of an idiot than I thought."

"I'm your idiot though."

"Hmph." She's smiling though and that's all that matters.

Breakfast is a strange affair – everyone seems to alternate between being far too loud and far too quiet, thrown off-balance by the knowledge that they're about to lose a third of their group. It passes far too quickly for Eliot's liking and soon they're all gathered in the main living area, Josh and Margo loaded up with their bags and Penny lurking behind them.

"Send us a bunny if you need anything." Josh smiles, juggling his box to the side in order to give them an over-the-top thumbs up.

" _Anything_." Margo reinforces. She's looking at Eliot when she says it.

Then Penny claps a hand down on each of their shoulders and they're gone.

Eliot stares at the empty space for a moment, a painful tugging in his chest. He should be with Margo. He should be in his kingdom, fighting needless bureaucracy and trying to save it from its own insistence on backwards traditions and poor communication.

On the other side of the room, Alice is already pulling a book off the shelf and getting ready to kickstart today's research. She catches him looking and shrugs, pulling the lid off her highlighter with her teeth.

Eliot sighs and floats another book over to himself, folding himself onto the couch.

One month.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’ve found a ritual here for revealing the truth of a person. It doesn’t sound too bad – something about putting your hands in a pair of gloves and letting bullet ants sting you. I mean, that can’t be too…”

“Bullet ants are the highest ranked creatures on Schmidt’s pain index. They get their name because the pain of their sting feels like you’re being shot.” Alice says shortly, not even looking up at Eliot as she scribbles down notes in her notepad. She pauses to double-check something in her own book, frowning. “And that sounds more like the initiation ritual of the Sateré-Mawé tribe than anything useful. I think your translation is off.”

Eliot makes a face, resisting the urge to throw his book at her. It’s been five days since Margo and Josh left for Fillory and tensions are starting to run high. Although Julia, Penny and Kady have been helping out where possible, they’ve mainly been dealing with their own missions. Which has meant that Eliot and Alice have spent the past few days holed up together, their awkward but genial conversations slowly getting more and more clipped as Eliot grows bored with reading books he’s already scoured multiple times and Alice grows bored with listening to Eliot’s moaning.

Add those irritations to the unspoken ghosts of the past hanging in the air and it’s a miracle they’ve lasted this long.

“Sorry.” Eliot grits out. Even he can tell that he doesn’t sound remotely genuine. “I’ll try not to waste your time again.”

“That would be nice.”

“I’ll just keep reading.”

“Good.” 

“Even though we’ve both read every book in this place and I’ve read most of them at least twice.”

Alice slams her book shut, finally looking up. Her jaw is set, blue eyes flashing in frustration as she lets out a disgusted noise.

“What exactly do you want me to do, Eliot? I don’t think Audible do audiobooks in Ancient Greek, but feel free to check if that’s what you’d prefer.”

Bristling, Eliot uncrosses his legs and faces Alice. The table stretches between them, a great expanse that makes Alice seem at once too close and thoroughly unreachable.

“And what is that meant to mean?”

“Nothing. I just know that you’re not a big reader, that’s all. We all heard the nipple clamp bribery story.”

“Just because I’m not a huge fan of studying doesn’t mean I don’t like _reading_.” Eliot spits out. He’s not sure exactly why he’s getting so offended by the insinuation – probably decades of subtle and not-so subtle jabs about his perceived intelligence rising up and bubbling over – but he’s damned if he’s going to let Alice Quinn suggest he’s anything less than he is. “Some of us just prefer actual fiction to textbooks. Especially when we’ve already read said textbooks multiple times when you weren’t around.”

“Well, until the others locate the stash that hedge told us about, we’re stuck with these ones. Deal with it.”

Glaring at each other, Eliot and Alice return to their books. For a while they read in silence, ignoring each other. Eliot is just considering whether it’s worth incurring Alice’s wrath if he starts doodling in the margin when she clears her throat and shoots him a look.

“It’s not like I didn’t want to be around, you know. I offered to stick around and help with the Monster. Quentin…” She swallows, closing her eyes briefly. “Quentin sent me away.”

Huh. He hadn’t known that. He’d just assumed Alice had left before she could get sucked into their craziness again. Still, he’s not exactly in an empathising mood right now and can’t bring himself to take the olive branch.

“I’m not surprised, after what you pulled in Castle Blackspire.” He says spitefully. “How could he have ever trusted you after that?”

From the corner of his eye he watches Alice’s whole body flinch as his words land. Bullseye. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was the exact reason Quentin gave her; Quentin had always been the type of person who needed to trust those he gave his heart to absolutely.

“Losing you nearly broke him.” He can’t stop the words from pouring out of him, bitter memories of Quentin’s forlorn face swimming across his vision. “He went full on Orpheus trying to save you and you repaid him by stabbing us all in the back.”

“Do you really want to start a conversation about stabbing people in the back, Eliot?” Alice hisses. “Should we start with you tripping and falling dick-first into Quentin or…”

“Oh, here it comes. At least we were drunk out of our skulls for that. You destroyed those keys when you were stone-cold sober.”

“And not exactly in the best of places mental health-wise…”

“None of us were! When have _any_ of us ever been mentally stable? And if that’s your argument, we were literally overdosing on our own emotions when we slept together. I was drowning in guilt, Quentin was being Quentin, and Margo…”

A thought occurs to him.

“But you don’t care about Margo. You barely ever mention her part in it. What makes me so different?”

Alice stares at him, looking faintly stricken. More than that, she looks embarrassed and Eliot suddenly has the crushing realisation of exactly why that must be. Alice may be many things – uptight, judgemental, prickly – but she is in no shape or form a homophobe. Which means…

Eliot’s skin itches, shrinking down around him and he can’t breathe, can’t think, because his attraction towards Quentin must have been as clear as day since the very beginning. Even when he’d been with Mike - and Alice and Quentin had been in the first flush of their relationship – Eliot hadn’t been able to resist making innuendo or pulling Quentin close. He has a very vivid memory of the day Alice came home from the library only to find Quentin curled up with his head in Eliot’s lap, Eliot’s left hand gently carding through his hair as Quentin animatedly explained why the _Chronicles of_ _Narnia_ books were inferior rip-offs of the _Fillory & Further_ series. Quentin’s face had crinkled into a broad grin as he caught sight of his girlfriend, wriggling off the couch with only a brief pause to steal a mouthful from the cocktail glass cradled in Eliot’s right hand. They’d kissed hello and gone upstairs, but not before Eliot had caught the strange, uncertain look Alice had sent his way.

He’d seen that look a few times afterwards – when Quentin practically climbed him to get a notebook Eliot was holding just out of reach, when Eliot positioned Quentin on the kitchen counter and fed him spoonfuls of soup as he tested what food he wanted to make Mike – but Alice had never said anything and in the end Eliot had shrugged and put it down to her not knowing him very well and feeling uncomfortable interrupting.

Now he knows exactly what that look must have been. Suspicion. Although Eliot hadn’t been aware he was catching feelings until well after the whole emotion bottles fiasco, he’d always known full well how attractive he found Q. And so, obviously, had Alice.

Jesus. Had she spent this whole time thinking he’d just been waiting for an opportunity to lure Quentin away from her?

Eliot swallows hard, all petulance and irritation from his and Alice’s spat draining away as if it were never there. He’s going to have to put her right. He never planned on sleeping with Quentin once he’d hooked up with Alice.

At least, he doesn’t think he did.

“Alice…” He begins, reaching for her awkwardly. And that’s when Penny, Julia and Kady suddenly all appear in the room.

“Check the Monster.” Kady barks, rushing over to the door and framing it with her fingers, examining it carefully. “Make sure it’s out of sight. Throw a perception veil over it as well.”

“On it.” Penny vanishes into Julia’s bedroom. Julia follows him, only to re-emerge a few seconds later brandishing what looks suspiciously like a batch of the magically upgraded pepper spray Margo likes to whip up from time to time.

Over by the door, Kady is nodding in satisfaction. “It’s solid. Nothing’s getting through there unless we want it to.”

“Ummm…” Eliot stares at them over the back of the couch. The hand he’d been reaching towards Alice with drops loosely to his side.

“There’s a whole contingent of Librarians on their way here.” Kady says briskly, shaking out her hands. “We saw about five or six of them coming up the avenue in a grey clump.”

Eliot throws his book down on the table, adrenaline surging. “Are they attacking us?”

“I don’t know – maybe? They looked kind of purposeful.” Julia answers distractedly, positioning herself near the door with the pepper spray aimed at head-height. “They definitely weren’t making any attempt to stay off our radar.”

“Who cares why they’re coming? Just be ready to blast them when they arrive.” Kady snaps.

Three sharp, measured knocks ring out as if on cue. The group look warily at each other; it’s a bit of an anticlimax compared to the blunt force power-play they were expecting.

“We know you’re in there.” A voice calls though the door. Even muffled it sounds the perfect mix of genial and sinister that only Librarians seem able to pull off. “We’re looking for information, not trouble.”

They pause. Penny snorts, grabbing a heavy black ashtray from the shelf beside him and testing the heft of it.

“Sure. Tell that to the thousands of Magicians you went _1984_ on.”

The unseen Librarian sighs loudly. “Of all the books you could have chosen, you went for the cliché? Very disappointing, Mr Adiyodi. Might I recommend you broaden your horizons with a library card?”

“Back off.” Kady snarls, storming forward to kick the door aggressively. “You’ve already got your claws into one Penny. You don’t get to have this one too.”

“Ah, Kady Orloff-Diaz. The one left behind. Your Penny used to talk about you constantly.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, turn around and leave before I blast you right through this door.” Kady bites out. The words are strong but there’s the slightest of trembles at the corner of her mouth as the barb lands and digs in.

 _Used to_.

“No need for threats, Miss Orloff-Diaz.” A second voice soothes. “We really do come in peace. We’re seekers and keepers of knowledge, not violent criminals.”

“I think the lines have been blurring for a while now. You just hide it well.” It’s Alice’s turn to speak up now, having abandoned her research and joined the group at the door. Her fingers are flexing, twisting into half-formed tuts that fade out into nothing. Eliot notices her legs are trembling and suddenly realises he has no real idea what happened to her while the Monster was wearing him as a skin-suit.

“Miss Quinn.” For the first time, the voice sounds vaguely discomfited. “You’ve gone off script.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Julia rolls her eyes and before anyone can stop her she’s reached for the handle and yanked the door open. There’s a stunned silence as the two groups suddenly make eye contact with each other, the five suits on the other side of the opening a poor reflection of their own, much more disparate group.

The man at the front of the group inclines his head, reaching up to adjust his spectacles. “Thank...”

“I didn’t do that for you.” Julia interrupts, folding her arms and raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “I just couldn’t stand another round of your passive-aggressive bullshit introductions. Now, did you come all this way just to hear the sound of your own voices, or is there actually some reason why you’re ruining my afternoon?”

“God, I adore you.” Penny mutters under his breath. Eliot, standing only a few inches away, does him the courtesy of pretending he didn’t hear him.

The Librarian with the glasses smiles thinly, clasping his hands in front of himself and rocking forwards with an empty approximation of an earnest expression.

“Several months ago, there was an…incursion…at the Library. Several brave Librarians lost their lives trying to hold off something not of our world.” His gaze falls on Eliot and his mouth twists. “Something that we believe you are _intimately_ familiar with, Mr Waugh.”

“We all have our past regrets.” Eliot quips coolly. “Fashion disasters…missed opportunities…acquaintances that we wouldn’t choose to get into bed with again. You know how it is.”

“Indeed.” The Librarian’s expression sours further at the evasion. “Except that this was no mere acquaintance, was it? This was something old. Powerful. Something had its _hooks_ in you, Mr Waugh. Something so determined to hold on to you that your old friend Mr Coldwater felt that his only choice was to wage war on the Library itself.”

“Look, we regret the loss of life.” Kady cuts in, her voice suggesting something completely different. “But why are you here now? You can see that Eliot’s himself again. Quentin freed him and the thing that killed your friends is long gone.”

The Librarian’s eyes cut to her. His eyes are flat and dark, almost dead in the cool glow of the hallway lights. Eliot is abruptly reminded of a foxsnake he once saw in the fields behind the house when he was young. It had been wrapped around a baby rabbit, slowly constricting and crushing the life out of it. Eliot doesn’t want to know who the Librarian is imagining as the rabbit here.

“ _Is_ it long gone? Really? A being that powerful?”

“Yup.” Kady draws out the word, letting the ‘p’ pop off her tongue obnoxiously. “We banished it to another realm. I don’t know what it’s doing there now, but it’s not our problem anymore. There’s no trace of it left to bother us here.”

“Or you.” Penny adds, his smirk making it clear that the Library are an after-thought in this situation.

“I see. That is…good news.” It is clearly anything but. “There was definitely nothing left on this plane that could be used to summon it again? The Governing Council is concerned for the safety of all should a Hedge group or…” He eyes the group. “…inexperienced students of magic attempt to call upon its power. Sometimes protecting the flame of knowledge means keeping it from those who would use it to do harm.”

“Well, you can relax. There was nothing left by the time we were done with it. What can I say, man? It just went ‘poof!’ and vanished.” Penny widens his eyes dramatically, only a finger twitch away from a frankly fantastic set of jazz hands. Eliot has to stifle a snigger at the affronted look it garners from the group of grey-suited clones in front of them.

“Wonderful. You’ve put all our minds at ease.” The Librarian smiles, turning to go before pausing and looking back as if just remembering something. “Oh. I nearly forgot. Whatever became of the stones?”

The group freezes.

“Stones?” Julia asks weakly. One of the female Librarians smiles genially at her from behind their elected spokesperson.

“The stones belonging to Bacchus and Iris. Their absence was noted and we looked into their disappearances. It appears they were victims of the same creature that attacked us.”

“Well, we don’t know anything about…”

“You and your friends were all present at the scenes of the crimes. We know that you saw the creature remove those stones from the gods.” She smoothes a hand back over her hair, tucking nonexistent rebel strands back into regimented conformity. “Anything plucked from the belly of a god must be saturated with their power - we would like to take them into our custody and protect them from misuse.”

“Well, aren’t you altruistic.” Eliot mutters. The Librarian with the glasses adopts a martyred expression.

“We try.”

“Well, _unfortunately_ , we don’t know where the Monster kept the stones. I guess they vanished when he did.” Kady shrugs apologetically.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Suit yourself. But we can’t help you. Sorry that you’ve wasted your time.”

The Librarian’s mouth trembles. A small vein snaking across his temple begins to pulse. For a moment, it looks like they might have trouble. Then, slowly, the tension eases out of his shoulders and he smiles jovially at them.

“Very well, then. We’ll leave you to enjoy your afternoon. But I must warn you – we have no intentions of leaving those stones to be abused by the wrong people.”

“And I suppose you’re the right people?” Alice asks sceptically. The man dips his head.

“Precisely. There is no safer place for those stones than within our walls. Good day.”

He walks away, quickly followed by the pack of solemn Librarians that seemed content to stand silently behind him during their tense conversation. Only the female Librarian that spoke lingers behind, her blue eyes settling on Eliot.

“I hope it was worth the deaths of so many good men and women to save your life, Eliot Waugh.” She hisses, voice like ice. Then she, too, is gone.

Eliot swallows hard, remembering the horrifying sight of Quentin screaming his soul away and knows for certain it wasn’t.

“What a bitch.” Kady seethes, slamming the door shut and checking the wards. “Like she’d even know what a good person looked like, working there.”

“What about the other P…” Penny throws up his hands at the furious glare Kady sends his way, rapidly backtracking. “Whoa, I mean…what happened to the stones the Monster was collecting?”

“I took them while we were clearing out his room for Eliot.” Kady says. Everyone except Alice takes a moment to shudder at the memory of the smell of dead flesh that had greeted them when they finally got round to it, the fly-infested koala corpse in the corner the stuff of nightmares. Eliot had left that to Penny and the others and claimed the wardrobe for himself; he’d taken great pleasure in ritualistically burning each and every single one of those awful outfits the Monster had seen fit to dress him in.

Julia had made Penny take what was left of the koala to Australia. It had been a sweet gesture, even though Eliot had wondered aloud whether the koala had actually ever set foot there whilst alive.

“We can’t let the Library get those stones.” Julia says firmly, looking around the group. “That paper we found suggested that they were building blocks for making a body. Maybe the Monster’s body. Who knows what they could do with that?”

“You think they could build a body and then summon the Monster back out of its prison?” Penny asks. Julia purses her lips.

“I don’t know. Maybe? Or maybe they don’t need to put the Monster into it – maybe it will be powerful enough to do things with even if there isn’t a mind in there.”

“Either way, we can’t risk it.” Kady says firmly. “We have two already – how many are left?”

“Two. One in a god named Heka and one in a god called Enyalius.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? As power-hungry as the Library are, they’re not exactly going to go up against _gods_ to get those stones. They’re safe.” Alice points out. Julia shakes her head, gritting her teeth.

“Q and I found that Heka’s been dead for centuries. That stone could be anywhere.”

Penny closes his eyes, lightly knocking his head against the wall. “We’re going to have to find it before the Library gets their grubby little mitts on it, aren’t we?”

“It’s probably the wise thing to do.” Julia muses. Penny raises an incredulous eyebrow at her.

“What, and you don’t have a problem with that? We’re already splitting our time between tracking down those books the Hedge mentioned and trying to solve your magic problem. If we have to look for some god stone as well, we’re never going to…”

“We said one month, didn’t we? I can wait that long.” _If it means getting Q back_ , is the unspoken end to that sentence. Penny tenses his jaw but doesn’t say anything. Rolling her eyes, Julia nudges his shoulder with hers and slips a hand into his.

“Hey. It’ll be okay. And besides, we know what auction those books ended up in now. It won’t be long until we can cross one thing off our list. So just relax, hmm?”

“Speaking of relaxing…” Kady holds up a bottle of vodka and starts rummaging for mixers. “Who’s up for some Sea Breezes?”

Shuddering, Eliot elbows his way past the love-in that is Penny and Julia (Pulia? Jenny? They need _some_ sort of couple name if they’re going to continue doing everything together as they have been) and lightly pushes Kady away from the drinks cabinet.

“Get away, you heathen. You wouldn’t know a decent drink if it poured itself down your throat. As we all well know.”

Kady shrugs. “What can I say? Todd’s Manhattan was better that night.”

“ _You take that back_.”

Grinning, Kady takes a careless swig of the vodka and walks into the living area, throwing herself down on the couch to wait for her drink like the brat she is. Eliot mutters under his breath as he puts away the supplies she’d pulled out and sets about gathering the ingredients for salted caramel pecan sours. She can complain all she wants, but like hell is Eliot going to share a room with people getting drunk off _Sea Breezes_.

He hesitates a little, noticing that Alice has retreated back to her corner and stuck her nose back in a book. He wonders whether she’s still thinking about their argument, or Eliot’s sudden realisation about her focus on his part of the threesome fiasco.

He thinks about taking her drink over to her, maybe quietly taking the opportunity to set things right as he’d intended before. Except that Kady’s sprawled mere inches away and he has no desire to rake up the past in front of an audience.

Besides, the moment’s passed now, he reasons. He’ll clear the air later.

* * *

He doesn’t clear the air later.

Not that he had truly believed he would, anyway. He knows as well as anyone how much of a coward he is when it comes to talking about things that matter. There’s always something that can be used as an excuse to put things off until a ‘better time’, whether that’s the near-constant presence of Julia in the living area as she joins in with researching or the battered box of old texts a satisfied Kady finally manages to track down and liberate from their owner.

It’s been nearly a week since the argument, anyway. He’s pretty sure Alice is more concerned with the fact that they’re almost halfway to their niffin deadline than years old bitterness, anyway.

Probably.

Eliot suddenly realises he’s been staring pensively out at the balcony again as he thinks and shakes himself, forcing himself to focus back on the Latin he’s translating. It’s bad enough that he’s been finding himself constantly wandering past the balcony doors recently; he doesn’t need to make his anxieties any more obvious than they probably already are.

“He hasn’t been back since that night, has he?” Alice’s voice cuts across his thoughts and he lifts his head to find her looking back at him with furrowed brow. “Quentin, I mean.”

“No.”

“Are you…worried about that? You did tell him to stay away.”

Eliot worries his lip, wondering whether it’s worth putting his concerns into someone else’s head. “That didn’t stop him coming back before. This is the longest he’s been away since he burned.”

Alice pauses, tilting her head. “You’re worried this is permanent. That he won’t come back again.”

“What’s the point in looking for how to take advantage of whatever went wrong with his transformation if he isn’t around to be fixed?”

Silence. Eliot watches a spider crawl across the floor and wonders how long it will be until Penny and Julia come back with food.

“I wasn’t going to say anything until we found the other spells we need,” Alice begins uncertainly, drawing a sheet of paper out of the folder she’s been keeping her notes in and passing it across to Eliot, “but I found how to summon him away from his place of transformation.”

Eliot blinks. He takes the paper with trembling hands, gaze tracing the neat lines of writing and equations that cover it.

It’s relatively simple, really – the odd popper switched around, a sprig of lemongrass burnt beforehand in a silver dish, but underneath all that it’s just the standard niffin summoning ritual. He looks back at Alice helplessly, his heart in his mouth.

“When did you…”

“Last night. After you went to bed.”

“When were you going to…”

“Like I said, I was waiting until we had everything we needed. I was worried you might…”

“Summon him?” Eliot laughs – even he can tell it’s not a pleasant sound. And the worst thing is that Alice is right. It’s taking everything in him not to storm out to the balcony right now and summon Quentin immediately just to remind himself of that petulant frown and stubborn glare.

“It’s not a good idea, Eliot. He was furious last time. He melted the furniture with his bare hands.”

“If you think that’s bad, you clearly never got the Month of Needless Bitchy Commentary treatment.” Eliot mutters.

“What?” Alice is frowning at him now, confused, and Eliot curses himself. He’d never got round to following up on Penny’s suggestion about explaining the mosaic timeline, either.

“Nothing. Have you finished with that book? I think it’s a rebuttal to mine and I want to check which bits the author disagreed with.”

Alice regards him silently for a moment before handing the book over and taking another from the box. Eliot smiles in thanks and immediately looks down, feigning absorption in the first chapter until he feels her look away.

She hasn’t taken the spell back.

He thinks he’s got away with it – Julia and Penny return not long afterwards and the rest of the day melts away into evening as they inhale sushi and scour the rest of the new collection of books. They keep reading, keep making notes, until eventually, one by one, they begin to turn in.

Eliot is pretending to be fascinated with the passage he’s reading when Alice finally closes her book and begins to clear up after herself. She’s the last of them after Kady yawned and went upstairs an hour ago, and Eliot is already trying to remember whether they have lemongrass in the apartment when Alice stops at the door to her room and looks back at him.

“Be careful, Eliot. The real Quentin would never forgive himself if he hurt you.” And with that little bombshell she’s gone.

Eliot huffs out a laugh, scrubbing a hand over his face in exasperation.

When has he ever managed to fool Alice Quinn?

* * *

There’s enough of a breeze that Eliot struggles to keep the lemongrass alight long enough to go through the necessary tuts, though not enough that it threatens to blow the burning plant out of the shallow dish Eliot managed to find in one of Marina’s cupboards. The spell, at least, is firmly anchored in place: Eliot slipped the top under the pile of Fillory books he put in the middle of the casting circle, and although the bottom flutters determinedly every now and then there’s no real risk of it blowing away.

Eliot chants quietly as he twists his hands into the final shapes, looking around for a familiar form only to be greeted with nothing more than a balcony empty of anything except Eliot himself. Frowning, he picks up the top Fillory book and opens it to the first page. When that does nothing, he clear his throat and reads the first few paragraphs aloud.

When he’s finished, it’s silence that rushes up to meet him and there’s still no trace of niffin anywhere to be seen.

“Trust you to be picky, Q.” He mutters, securing the spell underneath the ash-filled dish whilst he goes to switch the 1970s set with the first editions from Quentin’s bedroom. If nothing else, he fully expects Quentin to appear in a blaze of fury just to tell him off for exposing his precious books to the elements like this.

Replacing the lemongrass and repeating the ritual, he swears and kicks the wall when nothing happens.

“What do you want from me?! Blood? That’s probably mostly alcohol by now. If you don’t mind waiting, I’m sure I can scrounge up some tears. I probably have some left in there somewhere.”

Sirens start up in the distance, a thin wail that rapidly fades into nothingness and leave Eliot smothered in silence. This high up, even the city that never sleeps seems quiet.

Eliot racks his brains for something else that might be personal enough to make Quentin appear. But everything else just seems unimportant next to the Fillory series – what else could possibly have had more of an impact on Quentin’s life than the books that had helped him scrape through the ugly process of growing up?

He doesn’t know what makes him walk back into the kitchen. He feels completely foolish as he wraps his fingers round the fuzzy skinned fruit and brings it out to the balcony, open and exposed somehow despite there being no one else awake. The sense of embarrassed vulnerability lingers as he gently places the peach on top of the book pile and casts again for the third and final time, fingers trembling as he weaves them through the air.

For the barest of moments, he could swear he feels a frisson of magic, hairs rising on the back of his neck as if he were being watched.

But when he turns around nobody’s there.

* * *

“We have a major problem.” He hisses at Alice the next morning. The blonde pauses, toast halfway to her mouth as she darts a look over to where Kady and Penny are discussing how to locate Heka’s stone. She must be as aware as Eliot is of what the others would probably think of their little experiment.

“The Library kind, or the niffin kind?”

“The niffin kind.”

“I _told_ you to be careful, Eliot! What happened? Did he…”

“He never even appeared! The spell doesn’t work, Alice – even if we find a solution, there’s no guarantee we can even get him here.”

Frowning, Alice bites into the last of her toast and swallows.

“That can’t be right. The spell doesn’t exactly give the niffin a choice whether to appear or not.”

“Quentin wasn’t able to make _you_ come with his dance.” Eliot points out. “It can’t work all the time.”

“Quentin couldn’t summon me because I was already inside of him. The spell’s iron-clad, Eliot – niffins don’t have to stay once summoned, but they do have to initially appear. Maybe you chose the wrong items or got a tut slightly wrong.”

Eliot bristles at the accusation. He’s always been praised for his precise tutting – when sober, he can cast with the best of them. He has a sneaking suspicion it’s why Fogg was always so annoyed by his life choices regarding alcohol and partying.

Well, that and the fact that he was single-handedly responsible for the sharp drop in the Physical Kids’ collective GPA since his arrival in the Cottage.

“I’m not blaming you.” Alice says quietly. Eliot resists the urge to roll his eyes – she could have fooled him. His expression must give him away, judging from the way her jaw tightens. “I’m not! I just...” She hesitates. “If you want, I could perform the ritual again with you. Maybe I can figure out what’s going wrong.”

Eliot studies her face. Alice doesn’t look like someone gloating over someone’s failure. She just looks tired and worn down. He wonders what he looks like to her.

“Please, Eliot. If nothing else, we need to know whether the spell will work when we need it. It’s why I let you cast it last night.”

“ _Let me_?”

“If I hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t even know it existed.” She retorts. It’s a fair point.

“Okay. Okay, you can be my Hermione. Any suggestions for personal items?”

“I’m guessing you tried the Fillory books. Anything else?”

Abruptly, Eliot remembers the peach he hurled off the balcony in a fit of pique last night. “No. Just the two sets he kept here.”

“Maybe we can add some clothes to the pile as insurance.” Alice muses. “And we can try and match the spell to the time of day when Q first niffined out, see if that gives us any extra power.”

“That was in the middle of the day. We’re going to have to get the others out of here if we don’t want them asking questions.”

“It’s fine. The three of them are going to chase up some of Kady’s old contacts on Friday, see if they know anything about the stone – they have an appointment with some recluse in Queens.”

Eliot stills. “Friday? That’s four days away!”

“And? There’s no urgency. He’s already been gone for two weeks. He can wait a few more days. What’s important is that we keep trying to find a cure for Quentin. As much as the others want to help him, I don’t think Kady and Penny will hold back on boxing him after the month is up. And Julia won’t be able to persuade them otherwise.”

Eliot wants to argue. Now that he knows there’s a way of summoning Quentin, he feels that knowledge like an itch in his bones, a call to action screaming at him from somewhere down deep. The rage he felt at Quentin’s murder attempt has dulled with the possibility that he’s saveable and the summoning spell is like a siren call to him. But Alice’s eyes are earnest, the grip on his hand firm as she searches his face for signs of agreement. She’s not going to back down on this.

“Alright.” He sighs. Alice nods and slides off the raised kitchen bench, already aimed towards the corner of the couch she has turned into her research hole since arriving here. Eliot knows that he should be joining her there – he and Alice have, after all, become the primary researchers on this by some sort of silent group vote – but the thought of spending another day with his nose stuck in a dusty book is suddenly stifling.

He escapes before Alice can realise what he’s doing and spends the morning in the MoMa instead, pretending that his stomach isn’t twisting with guilt as he aimlessly wanders the galleries and lingers helplessly in the gift shop.

He’s back in the apartment before lunch.

Alice doesn’t say anything and just passes him a book he’s only read once before.

* * *

By the time Friday inches around Eliot is ready to crawl out of his skin. He and Alice have exhausted the new resources Kady found for them, with only a few roughly sketched out ideas and notes to show for it – there’s no trace of anything to do with niffin transformations going wrong or Shades that refuse to completely burn.

At one point Alice had hinted at the possibility of taking the spell she’d written for Charlie all those years ago and improving it. Eliot had shut her down by saying the goal was to save Quentin, not add to the body count. He’d hated himself with every syllable that had passed through his mouth, but he thinks Alice was secretly relieved.

There’s also the fact that he’s pretty sure a recovered Quentin would have killed him if he let Alice get anywhere near niffining out again, but that’s neither here nor there.

He’s just finished sending a rabbit to Margo to update her on the situation when Penny hustles Kady and Julia into the main room, loudly complaining about the time. Judging from the way the girls are grinning at each other Eliot doesn’t think the lecture is having the effect Penny is hoping for.

“Come _on_ , people! Let’s go!” Penny pushes and with a sigh Kady and Julia take a hand each, vanishing.

“Go time.” Eliot mutters. He meets Alice by the stairs, the pair climbing up to the only bedroom other than Kady’s that is upstairs. Eliot wonders how Quentin managed to swing that – probably a mixture of having to play babysitter to a homicidal monster and Margo not being around enough to protest room allocations.

Eliot’s only previously been inside to grab the first edition Fillory books and he tries to ignore how empty the room feels compared to Quentin’s room at Brakebills. Apart from the Fillory books and a few odd items scattered about, the shelves are empty of everything except magic books and other reference material, with Quentin’s usual trinkets conspicuously missing. There are a few pairs of shoes piled near the door and a large black umbrella leaning up against the wardrobe, but that’s it for homely touches: even the artwork on the walls is nothing more than a continuation of the overly tasteful decoration of downstairs. Eliot feels a sudden pang of loss for Quentin’s nerdy poster of the structure of solar rays, stuck precariously to the wall of Quentin’s Brakebills room with tape until Eliot showed him the right poppers to anchor it.

The desk is covered in scraps of paper and open books, the corner of a long abandoned laptop just visible underneath a book of runes. Eliot avoids it; he has the horrible suspicion that those papers contain the building blocks of the last spell Quentin ever cast and Penny already raided this room for research purposes back when they first started looking for a way to revive him. Alice wanders over and pokes through the mess, humming thoughtfully under her breath as she retrieves four books and puts them in a pile on the bed, presumably to be taken downstairs later and added to their research pile.

Opening the wardrobe brings a whole new level of dissonance. He’s fully expecting to see Quentin’s usual jumble of hoodies, t-shirts and plaid when he pulls open the door and the sight of several neatly hung shirts, all carefully buttoned and ironed, fills him with unease. He had remembered the unusual sight of Quentin in a button-down from his brief escape back into the real world, but had assumed it was a one-off. But at some point while Eliot was gone Quentin had changed and the thought is an uncomfortable one.

At least Alice seems equally bewildered. She digs through the shirts with a frown, clearly trying to find something more recognisably Quentin. There’s nothing.

Eliot is just about to suggest they give up and continue using the Fillory books when Alice bends down to investigate the drawer in the base of the wardrobe, letting out a small ‘ha’ of triumph as she rummages through the folded fabric within. Standing up, she presents her find with a flourish for Eliot’s perusal and Eliot swallows hard, reaching out to it with a shaking hand, because he knows that hoodie.

He knows what it looks like in rain, sun and sleet, in daylight and candlelight, because it’s the hoodie Quentin was wearing the day they went through the clock. He knows what it feels like because it’s the hoodie Quentin was wearing the night he kissed Eliot and let himself be pushed down onto the mosaic. Eliot spent _years_ staring at that hoodie and its owner, until it was practically falling apart around Quentin’s shoulders and he had to steal it away for the other man’s own good while Quentin was off bartering in the village. They ended up using the scraps to help re-stuff Teddy’s toy rabbit after the Tantrum Incident and Eliot had pretended it didn’t make something fragile and tender inside himself warm to think of Teddy hugging the hoodie Quentin wore during their first kiss that really mattered.

It’s also the hoodie Quentin was wearing when Eliot broke his heart out of cowardice, but he’d rather focus on the positives, thanks.

“Think it’ll do? He used to wear this all the time.” Alice smiles. If she noticed Eliot’s overly emotional reaction to Quentin’s clothing she’s not letting on. Eliot smiles shakily back, folding the hoodie over his arm and helping Alice gather the books she was collecting to bring downstairs.

“I think it’ll do just fine.”

* * *

They set up the ritual on the balcony like before, except that this time Quentin’s hoodie makes a rough cushion for both sets of Fillory books and the new peach that Eliot couldn’t quite bring himself to leave out. Alice blinks at its inclusion but says nothing, focusing more on the careful movements of her fingers as she and Eliot cast together, her eyes sliding over to Eliot every now and then to check the accuracy of his own crossing fingers.

The first attempt does nothing. Neither does the second.

They’re halfway through a third attempt – Alice’s brow furrowed, her lips pursed and upset as she clearly starts to wonder if it’s the spell itself that’s flawed – when there’s a long sigh from behind Eliot and he sees Alice’s eyes go wide. He spins to see Quentin unfolding himself from his casual sitting position in the corner, the niffin’s eyes an icy blue as he shakes his head pityingly.

“This is just painful. I’ve been here all week, idiots.”

“Q…” Alice breathes out, voice full of pained wonder, and Eliot belatedly realises this is not only the first time she’s seen Niffin Quentin up-close but also the first time she’s been able to communicate with him at all since saving his life months ago and giving Eliot the time needed to share his message. 

Quentin’s eyes flick to her, flat and cold and with none of the awe Alice is displaying right now. Eliot is abruptly reminded of the way he looked the night he threw Margo over the balcony and feels a stab of fear, fumbling a hand over to grab at Alice’s in case he needs to pull her back. His pulse thunders in his ears.

“Why didn’t you show yourself then, if you were here?” The words burst out of him in a rush, more a desperate attempt to distract Quentin long enough to get Alice inside than any real demand for information. 

It doesn’t work. Quentin doesn’t even look at him, still entirely focused on Alice. “Because I didn’t feel like talking to you, you jackass.”

There is an oddly bitter taste at the back of Eliot’s mouth as Quentin tilts his head and smirks at his ex. After so long with Quentin’s undivided attention it’s strange to see him examine someone else in such detail. He’s abruptly reminded of the way Quentin’s focus used to slip through his fingers like water whenever Alice entered the room and how miserable it had felt to be left alone after so many weeks of Quentin trailing after him everywhere and listening to the crap that spewed out of Eliot’s mouth with rapt attention. At the time, Eliot had assumed he was just missing Margo and feeling jealous of Alice actually living in the same house as her boyfriend. Post-Monster possession, he can’t quite believe how blind he was to his own feelings for so long.

He can feel Alice’s hand trembling in his as Quentin steps closer, though she is making an excellent job of hiding it as she holds her head high and makes firm eye contact with Quentin. “But you feel like talking to me?”

Quentin doesn’t answer right away, narrowing his eyes and staring at her as if he can see inside her skull. A hand shoots out – Eliot and Alice flinch back – but all it does is trace through the air, lazily sketching out a rough outline of the woman in front of him.

“You’re trying to bring me back.” He sings, sparks of magic rippling through his hair. “You want to recreate what Mayakovsky did. I can smell the magic on you.”

Eliot’s head whips round to stare at Alice at the confirmation of what he had been starting to suspect: Alice has been playing around and testing spell fragments after dark. To her credit, Alice looks sufficiently guilty about it, wincing and shooting Eliot an apologetic look before smiling tremulously at the niffin.

“Quentin…”

“Don’t even think about lying to me! I saw you and Eliot with those books. Read, read, read. It’s all you do, every day. It’s boring. You’re boring.”

And isn’t that a happy thought, that Quentin has been spying on them without their knowledge?

Beside him, Alice pulls her shoulders back and lets go of his hand, ignoring Eliot’s hiss of panic as she moves forwards until she’s only a few steps away from Quentin.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“That’s not what _you_ thought. You made it very clear to me. I understand now why you were so angry with me. Who would want to be chained to a frail human body when there’s so much out there to explore?”

“You would, if you were yourself right now.”

“Myself?” Quentin throws his arms wide open, laughing. “I’m more myself than ever, Alice.”

“No. You’re not. And I was wrong before. You did the right thing when you saved me. I was…”

“Weak.” Alice recoils, eyes wounded, and Quentin presses his advantage. “You always were. You pretend to be so strong, so knowledgeable, but really you’re just a scared little girl desperate to find some sort of reason for existing.”

“Quentin…” Eliot says warningly. Quentin just ignores him. There’s a slight curve to his mouth now, a casual cruelty threaded across his lips that turns Eliot’s stomach to look at. A spark of magic fizzles across the bridge of his nose.

“You looked at me as if I was the broken one, but you’re the one who hated herself so much that you were willing to tear magic away from the whole world. You lost Charlie and you became obsessed with bringing him back. You screwed that up and you ran away. You lost me and you became a niffin. And when you lost that, you turned on magic because it was the only thing you had left to lose. You’re pathetic – I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”

“Quentin, stop it!” Eliot snaps, because _Jesus Christ_. Was Alice this vicious when she was a niffin and trapped inside of Quentin? Is this what Quentin was living with, day in and day out, as he tried to bring her back?

Alice is crying now, but she’s not down. Not yet. Tears may be spilling down her cheeks, but they’re falling silently and her head remains high. “You think you’re winning here? All you’re doing is proving to me why we need to do this. I couldn’t save Charlie because you saved me first. I became a niffin because I had just watched the man I loved save me from a killing blow. I became a human because you saved me, _again_. And now it’s my turn to save you.”

Quentin is starting to spark now, smoke rising from his shoulders as they tense. “I don’t need saving.”

“You do, Q. And the fact that you can’t even see that just proves it.”

“Shut up.”

“Let us help you, Quentin.”

“I don’t want help!” In a sudden flurry of movement, Quentin grabs Alice by the arms and pins her against the balcony railing. His face is furious – barely recognisable in its twisted rage – and Alice winces, squirming. Eliot smells scorched fabric and swallows hard; Quentin’s touch must be burning her through her clothes. Yet she persists.

“You deserve another chance, Quentin. This year was so awful for you. You died saving Eliot – don’t you want to…”

Quentin grabs her cheeks in one hand, smiling at the reddening skin and the pained whimpers she lets out as he bends her backwards over the rail. Eliot watches, silent and frozen, his heart in his mouth. All he can think is, _not again_.

“Isn’t that cute?” Quentin turns his head to beam at Eliot. “She thinks I care about you.” He vanishes and Alice doubles over with a gasped sob, hands reaching up to cover her face. Eliot is about to go to her when Quentin suddenly appears right in front of him, making him curse and reel back in shock.

“You do realise that you’re nothing to me, right? You’re like an ant next to an elephant.”

“Well, scientists apparently found that elephants are scared of ants, so you might want to rethink that analogy.” He jokes weakly. Judging from Quentin’s narrowed eyes, the niffin doesn’t find it particularly funny.

“You think I’m scared of you?”

“No. But you definitely can’t ignore me, for some reason.”

“You think you’re so special Eliot Waugh.” Quentin murmurs, leaning in. Eliot shivers. “Don’t mistake boredom for affection. You’re like a toy. I can pick you up and put you down whenever I want.”

“Do you put on star shows for all your toys then?” Eliot manages. Quentin frowns, but something flickers in his eyes and suddenly Eliot realises the truth. “You _are_ scared.” He breathes.

Quentin’s lip curls into a snarl, but Eliot presses forwards. “You don’t want to hurt me. You can’t bring yourself to cut ties with me. And you don’t know _why_.” Quentin is laughing incredulously now, but Eliot keeps going – he knows he’s onto something here. “Ever since you niffined out, you haven’t cared about anything outside of your own entertainment. Except for me. And that _terrifies_ you.”

He goes to speak again, but Quentin makes a sharp gesture and his words vanish. There’s lightning brewing in Quentin’s eyes now, but a strange calm has settled on Eliot. He knows he’s correct – Quentin can’t hurt him. Not really. He’s only proved right when Quentin grabs his face like he grabbed Alice’s, except that this time no skin burns. Quentin must realise this for himself as he glances down at his own hand in disgust before looking back into Eliot’s eyes.

“You think just because I spent a few years riding your dick that you mean something to me?” Quentin hisses. Behind them, Alice breathes in sharply and Eliot winces. He still hasn’t got round to enlightening Alice about the nature of his and Quentin’s relationship during the quest and this is light years away from how he would have liked to break that particular bombshell to her. Quentin must misinterpret Eliot’s grimace as a sign of weakness, because his smile is triumphant as he spits out, “You were, and always have been, just a convenient fuck.”

And then he kisses Eliot.

It’s a hard kiss, rough in a way designed to cause pain rather than thrill, and is clearly meant to be more of a punishment for Eliot than an act of desire. But it’s still Quentin kissing him and Eliot can’t help the shudder that runs through him, the way he opens his lips to it. And even though it’s incredibly strange (and not overly pleasant) feeling the magic sparking off Quentin’s tongue as he shoves it into his mouth, it still seems endlessly familiar.

He can’t help himself from bringing a hand up to cradle the back of Quentin’s head as he usually would, instinctively seeking to guide him, and he waits for the niffin to rear back in fury and blast him away. Except that a shiver runs through Quentin instead and he _melts_.

Suddenly, the pace of their kiss is slowing down, softening, and Eliot realises he’s in control of the kiss even as Quentin sways against him, fingers clutching desperately at Eliot’s hips. There’s a hunger to their kiss that wasn’t there before, the bone-deep kind that comes from wanting to crawl inside of someone’s skin and know them better than you ever thought possible. The kind that only makes an appearance long after you’ve sated that first initial lurch of desire, when you catch yourself watching them doing something completely boringly domestic and realise you’ve never seen anything more beautiful in your entire life.

He rubs a thumb against Quentin’s neck and is rewarded by a delicious little sound that he remembers well from nights in front of the fire as they retreated inside away from Fillorian winters. It makes something tender inside of him throb, a hopeless pull towards simpler times when all they had to worry about was Teddy teething and Quentin’s worrying new obsession with trying to recreate Andy Warhol’s soup art with the mosaic tiles.

They part, slowly drawing away from each other, and he watches as Quentin’s eyelids flutter open. He looks dazed and soft, his face open. He looks more like himself than he has for months. Then awareness filters back in and Eliot sees the look of panicked confusion spread before Quentin abruptly vanishes and Eliot is left holding thin air.

“Shit.” The word seems absurdly loud in the post-rush hour calm that seems to have fallen over the city and Eliot blinks as he suddenly realises he can speak again. “That is not what I expected.”

“You can say that again.” Alice mutters and Eliot freezes, suddenly aware that she saw everything. Slowly, reluctantly, he shifts his gaze to meet hers and finds her frowning quizzically at him even as she carefully massages her burnt cheeks with glowing fingers, smoothing the redness away.

“Alice…”

“Stop. Just…stop.” She sounds tired. Eliot tries to ignore the zing of guilt that twists through his gut. “I’ll grab the spell supplies. You can go and make us the drinks that will help make this conversation bearable.”

Unable to argue, Eliot just nods and scurries inside. His hands are shaking as he measures out the tequila, Cointreau and pomegranate juice, and he nearly spills the mixture everywhere as he pours the finished concoction over the ice-filled glasses. Even the pomegranate seeds he adds as a garnish make a valiant attempt to throw themselves overboard and by the end of it Eliot is left wishing he’d gone for something much simpler and more high school, like a Woo Woo or Sex on the Beach.

Alice is waiting for him on the couch by the time he’s done, the remnants of their spellwork piled carelessly on the table in front of her. She almost snatches her glass from Eliot’s hand as he offers it, taking a large gulp before putting it down in what looks like a very concentrated effort not to drain the thing in one. Eliot hesitates a moment, dithering over seating arrangements before settling himself down on Alice’s side of the couch. As tempting as it is to leave the coffee table between them, this conversation feels far too intimate to be had at a distance.

“So.”

“So.”

Silence reigns. Eliot is just considering whether he should go and make a second round of margaritas when Alice finally speaks up again.

“Quentin kissed you.”

“He did.”

“And you kissed him back.”

Eliot winces unhappily. This feels far too much like that fraught morning at Brakebills for his liking. “I did.”

“That wasn’t the first time, was it? I mean, apart from when…” Her voice trails off, a pained frown furrowing her brow before she visibly pushes the memory away and continues. “That didn’t look like two people kissing for the first time since a drunken fumble. That was positively Shakespearean out there.”

“Let’s hope not. We have far too much on our plates right now to be worried about the inevitable revenge arc that appears mid-play.” Eliot quips faintly. Alice’s mouth twists unhappily.

“I heard what he said, Eliot. About ‘riding your dick’. He said _years_. I don’t understand. When did…”

“It was during the quest.” The words bubble out of him, sudden and sharp. Eliot is almost surprised that they don’t cut him as they spill from his lips. “When we got the key at the mosaic. We had to find the ‘beauty of all life’ in order to release it. The quest…took a long time. A lifetime. Quentin and I grew old together.”

Alice regards him over the top of her glasses, eyes serious and dark. Eliot feels uncomfortably like she’s peering past his layers of clothing and flesh and looking deep into his soul. “You don’t just mean shared-the-same-space together, do you? You mean _together_. Like a couple.”

“Alice…”

“How long?”

“It’s hard to say. I mean, we’ve never really worked out Fillory’s calendar structure, and…”

“How long, Eliot?”

“Fifty years.” Eliot chokes out. Alice closes her eyes for a moment, the corners of her mouth tightening. Her fingers twitch towards her margarita.

Eliot rushes to reassure her. “Margo managed to stop us going with a last minute paradox twist, so it never really happened. I mean, we remember pieces of it, but we didn’t really _live_ it. It doesn’t mean that…”

“That you kiss like a couple that’s been together longer than I’ve been alive? That Quentin loved you enough to die for you? Or how about that you chose that memory to prove to Quentin it was you when you took back control from the Monster? I was there, Eliot. I heard you – ‘fifty years. Who gets proof of concept like that?’” She gives in and grabs her drink, draining it. Eliot watches her gulp down the pomegranate seeds and catches himself thinking what a wonderful Persephone she’d make. She definitely has a hunted look about her now.

“Don’t lie to me, Eliot. Don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything when every inch of you screams the heartbroken widower every time we research. I thought that you just missed your friend, or were suffering survivor’s guilt, but this…this makes far more sense.”

“Nothing happened after we remembered.”

Alice snorts incredulously, raising an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that Quentin didn’t try to persuade you to give it another shot?” At Eliot’s stunned look she lets out a watery laugh. “He’s always wanted you. Ever since our first year at Brakebills, way before you and Margo ever slept with him. He was pretty in love with you.”

“I’m not sure I’d say that.” Dry. His mouth’s so dry. Now it’s Eliot’s turn to knock back his margarita.

“I would. I used to see you together, hanging all over each other, and I could just…see it. How good you’d be together. And I was so jealous, because you guys were so comfortable in a way that Q and I never seemed to be. But you had Mike-“ Eliot flinches. “-and he was so sweet and eager with me and I just…tried to ignore it. What was I supposed to do, huh? Demand that he only love me? Scream at him to be a less complicated person? I mean, it’s Quentin we’re talking about, and I loved him – the real him. All of him.”

Eliot’s eyes burn. He didn’t know. He didn’t _know_ …

“He loved me. But he loved you too. He did everything he could to save me after I niffined out and he was just as obsessed with saving you from the Monster.” She huffs out a chuckle, shooting Eliot a wry look. “You know, when he thanked me it was for giving him the chance to realise you were still alive in there, not for saving his life from the Monster. I thought it was just Quentin being Quentin – I should have realised something had changed back then.”

“I turned him down because I thought he wouldn’t choose me if he had the choice.” Eliot blurts out. If Alice can be honest, so can he. “I was scared and I took that fear out on Q. I was going to…I was going to ask for a second chance if I ever got my body back.”

“It’s funny. I asked him for a second chance after you broke through and he turned me down. At the time I thought it was just because of what I did with the keys, but now I think it was just as much to do with you.”

“He loved you, Alice. I know he did.”

“And he loved you too.”

They sit there in silence for a while. It’s not tense or awkward – there is no sense of competition, or envy. It feels more like they’ve moved beyond words, as if by unburdening themselves of their secrets they’ve finally begun to tentatively rebuild the bridge they both burnt so long ago. As much as the discovery that Quentin had feelings for him long before the mosaic cuts him deeply with the renewed knowledge of his idiocy in that throne room, this newfound connection with Alice warms him in ways he didn’t expect. They both loved Quentin. They were both loved _by_ Quentin. And that’s okay.

After a few minutes, Alice’s hand slides across the cushions and finds his. They cling together, catching each other’s eye and both smiling helplessly at the absurdity of the situation.

“Do you think it has anything to do with his Shade? The mosaic timeline, I mean.” Eliot finally asks. Alice hums, brow creasing thoughtfully.

“I don’t know. Maybe? In a way, I hope not – books on time magic are notoriously unreliable. There’s little to no peer reviewing in that sector.” 

“So it’s a dead end?”

“Not necessarily. But it would probably mean having to persuade a collector to hand over their prized books. Time magic doesn’t draw enough interest to earn reprinting for most volumes.”

“So…more reading?”

“More reading.” Alice confirms. They both chuckle, thinking of their argument the other day. It feels a lifetime ago now.

“I suppose we ought to get back to it now, actually.” Sighing, Alice casts a woeful look at the pile of books waiting beside Quentin’s Fillory books on the table. Even for her, the amount of studying they’ve done over the past few days is starting to wear. “Unless you have any more secrets to share, that is?”

It’s a joke. Something to lighten the mood and ease them back into the daily routine. She’s not really expecting anything else.

Instead, Eliot swallows and tightens his grip on her hand. There’s one more thing that she deserves to know.

“We had a son together.” He says quietly. Alice shifts to look at him and his words dry up. Isn’t this just adding salt to the wound? But then Alice squeezes his hand and he feels that warmth again.

“We had a son together,” He tries again, voice much stronger this time. “His name was Teddy and he had Quentin’s eyes and my charm...”

And Alice listens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liiiiiiiiive! I'm so sorry for the delay, guys - I was working about 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for two months and then it took forever to get my writing mojo back again. Hopefully the added 10,000 words go a little way towards making up for it?


	7. Chapter 7

“I swear to god, the man’s like a cockroach. If I never have to see him again it will be too soon. He’s just so, so… _ugh_!”

There is a certain amusement to be taken in the sight of Julia Wicker lost for words. Pacing around the apartment as she is, Eliot wouldn’t be surprised if she has already walked the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge this morning. He ponders the wisdom of saying so and decides that discretion is the better part of valour in this instance.

“I mean, _Lovelady_? Who in their right mind would call themselves that?”

“Someone that has no idea just how uncool they are. Which fits Pete perfectly, you’ve got to admit.” Kady chimes in. Judging from the wicked grin on her face, Eliot somehow doesn’t think he’s the only one entertained by this version of Julia.

Sometimes, it’s refreshing to watch someone incandescent with rage because of cringeworthy past acquaintances and not because someone is threatening their life or the life of someone they love.

“He didn’t even know anything about the stone! I had to see his smug face again and for what? Nothing!” Julia rants.

“He did say he’d look into it for us.” Penny reasons. Julia snorts, tossing her hair and shooting him a sullen look.

“Sure. He’s probably shaking down every contact he has right now. I bet he didn’t even sleep last night, he was so focused on tracking it down for us.”

“Like it or not, he’s our best source of information right now. The connections he’s gained as,” Penny’s nose wrinkled, “ _Lovelady_ are way more far reaching than the ones Kady made after dropping out of Brakebills. If anyone in the Hedge community knows about Heka’s stone, he’ll hear about it.”

“You wanna bet? You only think he has connections because he _told you_ he had connections. He’s probably just some jumped up little…”

“ _Julia_. We get it. You hate the guy. We all knew it when we got home yesterday, I knew it when we went to bed, and if anyone somehow _did_ manage to miss it they definitely know it after this morning.” Penny cuts her off.

Julia falters, taking an unsteady breath and flexing her hands. “Sorry. Sorry, I know I’m ranting. It’s just…it’s _Pete_. He’s such a _slimeball_.”

“And that slimeball is going to get us that stone before the Library can get to it. We have to use every edge we have, Jules. There’s only so far the people I know can take us; I’ve been out of the loop for too long.” Kady says gently. “Maybe you should take the day for yourself – you and Penny could see if those books we grabbed from the auction have anything to help you with your magic.”

Hesitating, Julia’s eyes slide to the untidily stacked pile of said books. For all her brave words to Penny weeks ago about being fine pushing her own research needs to the side, Eliot knows the situation must be wearing on her. He can’t imagine what it would be like to be the only one without magic – it had been bad enough when the whole world had lost it. And the added threat from the Library must make everything worse.

“Yeah. Maybe. I…I’ve been so focused on the Library and Q…” Her eyes cut to where Eliot and Alice have already set up their research for the day and Eliot knows she must be thinking about the update he and Alice gave yesterday about the successful summoning of Quentin. He wonders if she’s secretly relieved she missed seeing more of her old friend’s casual cruelty.

“Exactly. Focus on yourself for the day. Eliot and Alice can handle the Q stuff and I…” A steady, confident knock interrupts Kady and they all pause, looking at each other.

“The Library?” Alice asks tersely. Kady shrugs, rolling her shoulders back and striding to the door.

“Only one way to find out.”

The snarling, hunched over blonde is not what Eliot expects to see when Kady swings the door wide and falls back into a battle-ready pose. He’d been braced for a cavalcade of grey suits, or perhaps a bewildered looking delivery guy they’d all forgotten about. Not some dubiously dressed girl who looks like an extra from a terrible modern remake of the _Breakfast Club_.

“You’re not my Postmate.” Kady quips. The blonde’s face twists even further in response.

“I am the Baba Yaga. You live on my property, under my protection, and your rent is due.” She growls. Eliot absently wonders if she ever considered trying out for Batman – she’d definitely have given Christian Bale’s raspy voice a run for its money.

“Okay, well, this isn’t exactly our place…” Kady tries. The Baba Yaga snorts, forcing her way into the apartment with seemingly no care for the numerous wards they had put up. Which…is not exactly reassuring Eliot about their security here. If the building really is hers, maybe there’s a deeper magic involved that usurps theirs; it’s definitely a better alternative than worrying whether their wards aren’t as strong as they thought.

“You’re here now. And the list is clearly posted on the premises.” The Baba Yaga spits impatiently, gesturing at the fridge and pausing at the sight of the bare door. As one, they wince; they’d binned all of Marina’s notes and magnets after Josh accidentally spilt sauce all over the fridge because he was distracted by Margo’s latest clothing purchase.

“Yeah, so slight problem about that…” Eliot begins. He wilts at the thunderous glare he receives from her for his trouble, shifting his book between them and pretending he’s not hiding from her gaze.

“One Webster’s Weeping Healer, one Totem of the Plump Pelican, and one Bag of Holding. Pay what is owed in two days’ time or wish I boiled you alive. The wench will explain.”

The noise that follows that particular proclamation is one which vividly reminds Eliot of his SUNY Purchase days and the hours spent in various club bathrooms listening to more inexperienced drinkers hacking up a lung. Not exactly a time he was longing to relive.

The girl lets out a huge, breathy sigh, straightening up and looking Kady in the eye for the first time since she arrived. “Holy shit, you have to pay her.”

“Her? You mean you. Okay, what the fuck is happening?”

“I’m Bailey. Sorry about the Baba Yaga. She can be a little…” The blonde makes a face, winking at the stunned faces opposite her as she drops down onto the couch. “The Baba’s the spirit of a vengeful Slavic witch I channel when I need to collect rent. Or deal with a chatty Uber driver. So if you don’t want to be her next meal, you should give her what she wants.” Bailey fakes a shiver, smiling conspiratorially. “Ooh, stressful.”

“You can’t be serious. There is no way that witch is really going to eat us if we don’t pay.” Penny argues. He crosses his arms and settles back against the cushions, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table as he raises a challenging eyebrow at Bailey. “It’s an empty threat.”

Bailey rolls her eyes, stretching an arm along the back of the couch. “Well, technically it’ll be me doing the actual digesting. And considering I’d really rather not indulge in any more cannibalism, I’d prefer it if you just paid what was owed.”

“Wait. Any _more_ cannibalism?” Alice squeaks. Bailey shudders, grimacing.

“Don’t ask. It was a thing. My wok was ruined.”

“But where are we supposed to find…wait a minute. The Totem of the Plump Pelican…” Kady moves to the largest collection of ornaments, fishing a particularly rotund bird off the side. “Wait, this thing?”

Bailey brightens immediately, jumping to her feet and scurrying over.

“Oh yeah, that’s it!”

“Oh. Marina must have found it. I just thought it was some ugly paperweight.”

“Shh, don’t insult it.” Bailey snatches the ebony pelican away from Kady, cradling it protectively to her chest. “It reacts. So, two more to go. At this rate I won’t have to eat…oh, shit. She’s coming back.”

Wheezing, Bailey slumps forward and convulses, her eyes rolling disturbingly in their sockets as the Baba Yaga takes back control. It would be fascinating to watch if it weren’t so unsettling.

“Pay me what is owed, or I will boil your marrow into soup, peasants.” There’s a pause as they all stare at her, waiting for the next threat. She just scowls at them. “See you Thursday.”

And then she’s gone, the door left wide open behind her. Wordlessly, Eliot flicks a finger and shuts it for her.

“Great.” Penny gripes, throwing his hands up in the air. “ _Another_ thing to do! And I thought it was hard juggling Brakebills with some psycho trying to kill us.”

“It can’t be too hard to track down.” Alice frowns, delicately pushing her glasses up her nose. “The Baba Yaga wouldn’t set anything impossible – she’d lose out on all the charms and relics she could be getting from us every month.”

“Maybe she just wants to eat us. Let me tell you, being someone’s appetiser is not how I want to go out. And I am fresh out of childhood traumas to use as bait.” As satisfying as it was hearing the illusion of his father scream – and it _had_ been satisfying, there was no doubt about that – Eliot is in no hurry to be in the vicinity of any more cannibalistic activity anytime soon.

Well. Unless it was Todd being eaten. He might make an exception for that.

“If she just wanted to eat us, she could have done it there and then. Why go through with the whole landlord schtick?” Julia points out reasonably. “Look, I was going to take the day off from researching anyway. Why don’t I…”

“I’ll do it.” Kady interrupts her.

“What? No, it’s fine, I can…”

“I said I’ll do it. It’ll do me good to have something just for me – I’m tired of being a sidekick.”

Julia blinks, hurt. “You’re not a sidekick.”

“Come on. I’m only in this group at all because of Penny.” She pauses, a pained expression briefly flitting across her face as she glances at where Penny is sat, desperately trying to be invisible now that the focus of the conversation has shifted. “My Penny, I mean.”

“That’s not true. You and me…”

“We’re friends, yeah. I’m not saying we’re not. But I want to start laying my own path as well. You and Penny are focused on your missing magic. Alice and Eliot are working on Quentin. Margo and Josh are in Fillory. I’m tired of just tagging along with whichever group needs me that particular day. I took this place from Marina; let me be the one who sorts out rent and stops us ending up in a stir fry.”

Julia regards her for a moment, silent and solemn. Eliot wonders if she’s going to do something stupid like trying to stop Kady, or say something aiming for sympathy but ultimately ending up closer to patronising – it’s something Quentin used to complain about when telling Eliot stories about their shared childhood after they first stumbled upon Julia in Marina’s safehouse, always when gesturing wildly with the hand holding his glass and putting Eliot’s precious silk ties at risk. As Quentin had said: “ _I always knew she just wanted what was best for me. It’s just that sometimes her idea of what was best and my idea of what was best didn’t match up_.”

Except that maybe she’s learnt her lesson, because all Julia does is smile and offer her pinky finger.

“Fine. Like I’d stand in the way of my best bitch.”

Kady relaxes, an all-over release of tension so subtle that Eliot hadn’t even realised she was holding it until it wasn’t there anymore. She grins, hooking her finger around Julia’s.

“Of course not. I’ll head out now, see what I can scrounge up. I’ll be back for dinner, if we’re eating together?”

“Garlic, paprika and parmesan butter oysters with minced shallots, followed by a delightful panna cotta. You’re welcome.” Eliot drawls, leaning forwards to grab his first book of the day. It’s one he’s only read once before, so he should be able to get through it without clawing his eyes out from boredom; Alice has abandoned him and the books in favour of burying her nose in the laptop she liberated from Q’s room.

He chooses to ignore the way Kady rolls his eyes at him (fondly, he’s sure) on her way out.

* * *

Kady returns that evening with the missing two rent items and – to her dismay – a new acolyte. Having tracked down Pete again to enlist his help, she’d somehow ended up saving him from an ex-girlfriend’s murderous wrath whilst they were at the flea market; judging from her puckered mouth as Pete dramatically retold the story to them all, Eliot got the feeling that she regretted it. Julia certainly did – Eliot kept catching her miming strangling the Hedge behind his back over the course of the night.

Still, it had proved advantageous overall. Whether Pete had been genuine in his original promise to help them track down Heka’s stone or not, he was certainly putting everything he had into the search now. Kady’s phone seemed to constantly be buzzing with scraps of information and tipoffs, and although part of Eliot wished the Hedge would just collate all his findings into one message, it was also very refreshing to suddenly feel like they were actually getting somewhere.

In direct contrast he and Alice had, after 18 days of solid research, finally been forced to admit that they had come up empty. Having scoured Marina’s books, Brakebills’ resources, the new collection from the auction and the internet – all multiple times – the pair had mutually acknowledged the uselessness of the task and thrown in the towel.

“There’s no point just sitting here re-reading everything.” Alice groans, rubbing a tired hand over her face. “If there was anything useful here we’d have spotted it already. We need to look elsewhere.”

“But where? We’ve looked everywhere. Kady ‘s run out of connections and all Fogg will say is that it’s impossible.” Eliot swallows, fighting back the urge to be sick. “What if…what if there _isn’t_ anything to be found? What if whatever happened during Quentin’s transformation was entirely unique and no one has ever written anything down that could help us?”

It would be just like Quentin to be stubbornly awkward even after death. And time was running out: if Kady and Penny forced them to keep to their deadline, they only had another 12 days to prove Quentin was saveable. 13 if they were lucky.

What would even happen if Q was boxed and he did turn out to have part of his Shade inside him? Quentin had said that Alice and Julia’s lost Shades were living in the Underworld as children, making miracles for the people of Earth. Was Quentin’s Shade incomplete? If they boxed what was left of him, would there be a vague and shadowy child drifting through the Underworld for all eternity, lacking all sense of self and purpose? Or would that child simply melt away as if it never existed?

Quentin had once told Eliot that he’d looked exactly like Teddy had when he was a child. Eliot imagined that child slumped in the Underworld, eyes blank and face vacant, and wanted to be sick again.

“No. No, there must be _something_.” Alice insists. Eliot tries not to notice how little certainty there is in those words. “There’s _always_ something, even if it’s just a scrap of myth, or a partially destroyed piece of art.”

“Alice…”

“I can summon Friar Joseph again! He’s the only niffin that was able to resist being boxed. I-I think that…maybe he…if he survived the loss of magic…”

“Alice…” Eliot swallows and leans forward, reaching for her hand.

“No!” She rips it away from him, immediately using it to compulsively tuck her hair behind her ears. “No, there’s always a way! Even if we have to write our own spell, we can…we can…”

She crumples, suddenly and without warning, collapsing against Eliot and curling into his chest as she starts to sob. Eliot clutches at her and lets his own tears flow, sharing in her grief.

They both know that they’re running out of options.

And Quentin’s strange behaviour means they can’t trust him to stay away if they leave him unboxed.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that - huddled against each other, a small ball on Marina’s impossibly huge couch – but by the time Kady reappears with Julia and Penny after chasing up Pete’s latest lead, Eliot’s neck is sore and stiff. The others don’t say a word about his and Alice’s bedraggled state, though Eliot does catch Julia shooting them worried glances as she helps Penny put together the sad excuse for a risotto he reluctantly volunteered to cook for them tonight.

Dinner that night is a quiet affair. At one point Penny tries to break the silence by telling Alice and Eliot all about the eccentric Hedge they met whilst investigating, but the pair make a poor audience and his strained jokes fall flat. Eventually he just lets his story die away into nothingness and no one calls him out on it.

Eliot is just wondering whether Margo left behind any Ambien he could use to get an early night and escape this misery when Kady’s phone lights up and vibrates on the table. She snatches it up, swiping away her lockscreen and reading, eyes darting left and right as she absorbs the information.

“Holy shit. _Holy shit_.”

“What?” Julia frowns. Kady excitedly slaps her arm.

“Pete says he has a line on a whole set of books that were liberated from the Library. He says that he can get us a meeting with the person who’s hiding them, if we think they might help us find the stone.”

Alice and Eliot stare at each other across the table. New books mean new chances at finding something about Quentin. Pete may not know why they’ve been researching so frantically – it had been a group decision that he didn’t need to know everything they were up to – but he may have just given them their best chance yet at saving Quentin if he can really get them access to books from the Library. With books entirely unique to their collection, if there’s anywhere that has evidence of niffins with partial Shades it will be there.

“No way. You’re telling me a Hedge broke into the Library and just walked out with a bunch of books? That’s got to be fake. Hell, last time it took a god-killing monster just to hold all those Librarians off.” Penny objects. Kady shakes her head, hair flying wildly about her face.

“They didn’t fight their way in – they didn’t _need_ to. The Library used to send my Penny to collect overdue loans all the time; they lend their books out to anyone with a Library card. So all you’d have to do is borrow a book and then pass it off to the community to be copied, or find who was borrowing books and then steal directly from them. People _hated_ what the Library was doing when they restricted access to magic – this was the only way they could fight back.”

“There’s no way they’ll just let us walk off with those books, even if Pete puts in a good word for us.” Julia points out. “I don’t suppose we have one of those book cloning boxes lying around, do we?”

They pause, all mentally running over what their various investigations into the apartment’s myriad of cupboards and hidden vaults has turned up. Finally Kady snaps her fingers and grins, pointing at Margo’s room.

“There’s one in Margo’s closet. I’ll text Pete back and get him to set the meeting up.”

Her fingers fly over the screen as she sends her message. Eliot shoves another forkful of Penny’s risotto into his mouth ( _Dry. How was it so dry? Had he used magic to give it this chalky texture?_ ) and waits with bated breath for Pete’s response. It seems to take forever, probably because Pete’s having to negotiate with the books’ keeper. Or possibly just has better things to do.

When the reply eventually comes, they’re all so tense that the jarring rumble against the table makes them jump. Kady grabs for it, grinning as she reads out its contents.

“He says he’s got us a meeting tomorrow morning. He’ll meet us at the Columbus statue at 9 and walk us over to the guy’s safehouse.”

“This is fantastic. The knowledge those books might hold…” Alice pauses, glancing round the table. “They could finally tell us what happened to Quentin. Or where Heka’s stone ended up. Or how to restore Julia’s magic…”

Kady’s phone vibrates again, cutting her off. Frowning, Kady checks it.

“It’s Pete again. He says there’s a rumour going round the flea market that some Hedge from Brooklyn has found an ‘ancient stone of the gods’ and is willing to sell to the right buyer. First come, first served from tomorrow.”

“What are the chances that the Library won’t hear that rumour?” Penny asks warily. Alice groans, her breath hissing out between her teeth in frustration.

“Minimal, at best.” Her eyes dart around the group. “We can’t risk it. There’s no guarantee that the stolen books have anything to do with Heka’s stone and if that ‘ancient stone’ turns out to be the real thing, then…”

“…we can’t run the risk of letting the Library swoop in while we’re at the other meeting.” Penny concludes. He raises an eyebrow in Kady’s direction. “Can Pete rearrange?”

Her lips twist. She skims back through her messages, frowning. “I get the impression this is a ‘one time only’ kind of deal.”

“Well, shit.” Eliot sums up. He’s getting kind of tired of the universe throwing them a bone only to whip it away again. There’s no way that they can chance the Library getting their hands on a piece of the Monster’s body, but if there’s even the slightest possibility that those books could help Quentin…

“We split up then. Divide and conquer.” Penny decides. “We can’t afford to miss either meeting. I’ll do the Fountain one – I can Travel any copied books straight back to the apartment.”

“I’ll go with you. You’ll need someone to help work out which books are worth copying.” Alice volunteers.

“I’ll head out to Brooklyn then.” Kady stands, beginning to gather everyone’s plates together. “I’ll grab some trinkets from the apartment, see if she’s willing to trade.”

“I’ll help. I may not be able to cast at the moment, but I’m a pro at carrying things.” Julia smiles.

The group begin to stand, preparing to disperse for the evening. For a moment, Eliot is offended – doesn’t anyone care what his decision is? – but then he realises that they’re all assuming he’s going to either play researcher again or mope attractively around the apartment. Perhaps not an unfair assumption, considering his focus and behaviour these past few weeks, but still unwarranted. He may be firmly Team Quentin at the moment, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t champing at the bit to get out of the apartment and do something useful other than research.

“I’ll go with Kady and Julia as backup.” He announces, rising gracefully from his chair and casually smoothing down his waistcoat. The rest of the group pause, staring at him. “Julia can’t cast so I’ll be more useful if things turn to shit. As they always seem to do for us.”

Kady snickers. “Trust me - if I get taken out and it’s down to you, then we’re in real trouble.”

For a moment, Eliot considers whether to be insulted by that. But, to be honest…fair.

“Still,” he pushes, looking her in the eye. “I want to come. Let me help. I need to get out of here for more than coffee runs and food shops. All this research is getting us nowhere and I want to be useful.”

Kady studies him thoughtfully, eyes studying his face. Eliot wonders if she’s thinking about her desire to be more than just a sidekick, about how Eliot has ended up the only founding and permanent member of the Niffin Research Squad.

“Fine.” She grins, linking her hands behind her back and stretching. “But you’d better bring your A-Game tomorrow, Waugh.”

Eliot shoots her a winning smile. “Do I ever bring anything less?”

Over by the sink, Penny snorts. When the water mysteriously redirects to hit him in the face, Eliot just smiles wider.

* * *

“Okay, hands up if this is not what you expected from someone with a god-stone.”

Eliot blinks up at the building’s façade in front of him, taking in the intricate patterns with a vague sense of disbelief. It looks like the building was once a basic brownstone, but at some point some designer got ideas above their station and applied some tacky monstrosity of carved limestone to the entrance and first floor. He’s not even talking the standard pattern of stripes and lines you see on so many white-fronted buildings – these carvings are positively nauseating in nature, crawling up and down and sideways with no discernible arrangement or design. In one place the twisting strip of fake vines lolls like a broken neck and in another the curves seem to commit suicide, plunging off at outrageous angles and destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions.

Eliot can’t remember ever seeing something so optically horrific in his entire life. And he grew up in a home where chintz was the height of fashion.

“It’s certainly…unusual.” Julia says diplomatically. She stares warily at the mutant cross between a dog and a goat that is curved around the spot where the curled ironwork erupts out into a period-style lantern. What period, Eliot couldn’t say. It has the distinct look of something that was produced cheaply in some factory in the last decade and then painstakingly aged to look like it was handmade in days of yore.

Even the panel of buttons that make up the intercom is surrounded by a swirl of carved vines and grapes. Kady looks suspiciously like she’s considering blasting them off the wall as they wait for the Hedge to respond to their call.

When the door buzzes open and they get inside, it just seems to get worse. They’re greeted with a faux marble floor and a senselessly large glass chandelier that somehow barely manages to light the whole entrance. The twisting stairs open out into a sweeping structure which oddly reminds Eliot of the ornate staircase from the Titanic and for one delirious moment he imagines himself as Jack Dawson, swept away for an evening into the strange fancies and luxuries of First Class. Except that he’s pretty sure no one on the Titanic would have over-waxed the handrails.

Wrinkling his nose at the greasy texture under his palm, Eliot follows Kady and Julia up the stairs and wishes desperately that there had been an elevator. The Hedge they’re seeking is, thank God, only four floors up; any further and Eliot has a nasty suspicion that he’d have embarrassingly demonstrated the damage several years of drinking, smoking and not exercising can do to the human body. Running away from people trying to kill you can only go so far as an exercise regime.

The door to the Hedge’s apartment springs open before Kady can knock, revealing a young woman with bright red lipstick and a startlingly broad smile. She looks like something out of another time – garbed in a navy 1950s-style dress, her auburn hair twisted up into an elegant bun and a rhinestone choker fastened about her throat, she looks the very model of vintage glamour. If it weren’t for the gaudy parrot brooch pinned to her front Eliot might have been tempted to swap style tips.

“Oh, hi!” She beams at them, stepping back to allow them entrance. “I’m Emma. It’s so nice to meet you!”

Eliot opens his mouth to introduce himself, faltering as he steps over the threshold and suddenly feels like he’s been dunked in ice-cold water. Judging from Kady and Julia’s suddenly frozen expressions, he’s guessing he’s not alone. Emma laughs at the sight of them.

“Sorry! That’s just my security spellwork. It would have temporarily encased you in ice if you wanted to hurt me.” She winks at them conspiratorially. “You can’t be too careful these days, can you? Especially with all the recent unrest in the magical community.”

“Right. Of course. That’s…sensible.” Julia manages, rubbing futilely at the goosebumps on her bare arms. “I’m Julia, and these are my friends, Kady and Eliot. Should we…”

“Sit down? Absolutely! Follow me!”

“…get straight to business?” Julia finishes lamely, exchanging looks with Eliot and Kady before following Emma and the clack of heels on black and white tiling. At least Emma’s apartment is less eye-meltingly gauche than the building’s façade and entrance: there’s a tactful scattering of décor and furniture that suggests someone with a modicum of taste had a major hand in designing it. Eliot is inclined to think it was Emma herself, especially considering the enormous parrot statue that sits in the corner, half-buried underneath a pile of hats.

The Hedge gestures them towards a leather-bound chesterfield, rushing around the room and bundling various items into her arms even as she chatters brightly to them.

“Do you know, you’re the first people to come about the stone? I’m quite impressed really, I only put the word out yesterday and I was expecting most people to assume it was a joke. It’s a very good sign that you took it seriously and came early, a very good sign. It tells me that I can trust you, you know? You’re not just out to buy and sell on. I’d hate to think someone was using me to make a quick buck. You never know with people, do you? I mean, I once had an ex-girlfriend who…”

“You don’t need to tidy up, Emma. We’re here for the stone, not to judge your home.” Kady smiles incredulously. Emma barely falters, hesitating for only the barest of instants before resuming her frantic clearing of the room. They can barely see her face over the mass of clothes and shoes she’s clinging to.

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t say anything. But you’d be thinking it, wouldn’t you? And I’d hate to have someone think poorly of me like that. It’s a quick fix, really. Just let me dump this in my bedroom and come grab my hats, and that’ll be it. Five minutes. Promise.”

She whizzes round the room a few more times, darting into the room next door at one point to get rid of her armful before busying herself with the hats strewn over the parrot statue. Eliot glances up at the mantel clock over the fireplace and watches the dark hands tick torturously slowly around the polished white face.

It’s been twelve minutes by the time Emma is seemingly done and she’s barely settled herself into the wingback chair across from them before she’s bouncing up again, a look of consternation on her face.

“Oh, how rude of me! I forgot to ask if you wanted anything to drink. I have sparkling water, coffee, tea, wine…I can break out the gin, if you’d like? Or maybe…”

“No, thank you.” Kady cuts across her. “We’re fine. If we can just get through our business we’ll be gone and out of your hair.”

“Finger sandwiches? Cake? How about a slice of…”

“We’re fine. Really.” Kady repeats firmly. Her smile is getting noticeably fixed.

“But you must have something!” Emma pouts, seemingly distraught at the idea of being such a poor hostess. “Oh! I know! My friend gave me some bear claws yesterday that are simply to die for! I’ll go get them now.”

She’s gone before anyone can object, disappearing through the door and out of view, the click of her shoes fading as she vanishes into the rest of her apartment. Kady groans in frustration, shoving her hair back out of her face.

“I’m not cut out for this kind of peppy happy crap. I should have gone with Alice and Pete – I’m sure we could have figured out a way to get the books back to the apartment.”

“What, you think Penny would have been better here?” Julia smirks, raising an eyebrow. The trio pause, taking a moment to imagine Penny’s likely reaction to Emma’s overly-excitable manner. Eliot thinks the poor girl would probably have been reduced to tears.

“Okay. Maybe not.” Kady concedes. “But I’m going to need you guys to help me keep her on track so we can get the stone and get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Did you bring any rope? I’m starting to think we might need to tie her down to get through this.” Julia jokes.

Eliot smirks. “Kinky.”

Rolling her eyes, Julia opens her mouth to respond just as Emma bursts back into the room, bear claws and other pastries piled high on a cake stand decorated with actual flapping butterflies.

“And I’m back! Sorry for the delay, the charm to stop these little guys stepping on the snacks kept failing. I’m not very good with sentience spellwork, but the effect is just to _die for_! Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Eliot drawls. Emma beams at him, settling the pastries in the middle of the glass coffee table and arranging her skirts about her as she sits back down.

“Now, let’s get down to business, hmm?”

* * *

Except they don’t.

Emma seemingly has the concentration span of a particularly challenged fly, constantly diverting their discussion with little asides about people she knows or anecdotes about her time in a Los Angeles safehouse during her college years. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times Eliot, Julia or an increasingly snappish Kady bring her back on topic – within the next few minutes she’ll have distracted herself with yet another story or decided that she simply must show them some related item and bustled off to retrieve it.

Even getting her to explain how she got her hands on an ancient stone with godly origins takes an age, a simple tale of her being in the right place at the right time in an art gallery auction becoming a twisting adventure full of side-quests and word-for-word recountings of various unrelated conversations she had with people there. And even then she doesn’t get the stone out to show them, seemingly more interested in talking them through the painting she’d originally gone there to buy than actually trying to sell them the item they’re interested in.

Eliot’s got the point where if he ever hears the phrase ‘Katsugori’s signature delicate brushwork’ again he’ll slit someone’s throat – possibly not even his – when Kady finally cracks and slams a hand down on the table, making the butterflies flutter in distress.

“Look, do you have the stone or what? Because I’m starting to think this is all one big waste of time.”

Emma looks hurt, her lower lip trembling as she puts the painting down.

“I’m sorry. Was I boring you? I ramble sometimes, I always have done, it’s just something I picked up in kindergarten and I’ve never been able to shake myself of the habit. Did you know that nearly 70% of Americans actually learn to…”

“The stone, Emma. Please.” Kady interrupts. Her voice is calm, but with an undeniable strain that makes it clear to anyone listening that her patience has well and truly run out. “Bring it out so we can see what you have and then we’ll talk prices.”

Nodding resignedly, Emma scurries out of the room. As soon as she’s gone Kady throws herself back against the couch and slams her head back into a throw pillow.

“Purgatory. I’m in Purgatory.”

Julia leans in close, chuckling as she removes Kady’s arm from over her eyes. “At least you got her to go and get the stone.”

“I swear, if this just turns out to be some sort of prehistoric fossil I am going to cut a bitch.”

“And I will be right beside you, handing you the knife.” Eliot says generously. Kady glares at him.

“You can’t talk, Mr ‘Oh, is that watercolour? You can hardly tell’. What happened to you helping me to keep her on track?”

“I was simply making polite conversation.” Eliot sniffs. “I hardly expected it to devolve into an art lecture.”

“That was _not_ an art lecture. That was torture. I did not come here expecting it to take-” she pauses, checking her watch, “ _Christ_ , almost two hours before she even got the stone for us.”

Eliot blinks, glancing at the clock over the fireplace. He hadn’t even realised how long this was taking.

“Okay, now that is extravagant.” He allows. “No more enabling of conversation for me when she comes back.”

“Where _is_ she, anyway?” Julia frowns, looking around.

As if summoned by her question, Emma appears in the doorway. She looks sheepish and uncomfortable, biting her lip in a way that’s sure to destroy her lipstick and wringing her hands in front of her.

“I’m really sorry, guys, but the spell I used to protect the box I put the stone in is proving stubborn – I must have put too much juice into it. Just have a pastry or two and I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got it open.”

“Do you need help? I’m a dab hand at getting into places I shouldn’t.” Eliot offers. Emma waves a hand, letting out a high-pitched laugh with a thin thread of panic hiding in it.

“No no, don’t trouble yourself. I won’t be long. Just relax and chat amongst yourselves. I really am sorry.”

And with that she’s gone again. Eliot turns to the others, the hairs starting to rise on the back of his neck.

“That was definitely not the laugh of a calm and collected seller.” He mutters. Julia nods, glancing about the apartment warily.

“Something feels weird here.”

Kady stiffens, her loose and sprawled posture suddenly a hard, tense line against Eliot’s side. “It’s a trap.”

“What?” Eliot and Julia chorus. At any other time their harmonising would be hilarious – now, it’s just another chord that fills Eliot with a growing sense of wrongness.

“It’s a trap. She’s keeping us here. All those delays, all those stories…she’s trying to run down the clock. She’s waiting for someone.” Kady hisses, jumping to her feet. “We have to leave. _Now_.”

They’re almost at the apartment door when Emma reappears. She pales at the sight of them, hands fluttering uselessly in the air.

“Oh! You’re not leaving, are you? I almost have the box open.”

“Sorry, Emma. Busy people, places to be, you know how it is.” Eliot chirps. He hasn’t missed how Emma has positioned herself between them and the door, blocking them from the exit.

“Please! Just give me more time! I just need five minutes, that’s all…”

“Too late.” Kady says brusquely, reaching out and shoving Emma out the way. She goes over with a squawk, stumbling into the hall table and barely catching herself on the lacquered patterned wood. Julia pushes past, grabbing hold of the door knob and swearing as it twists in her hands, the click of a lock echoing in the bare space even as the knob stiffens and freezes in place.

Eliot turns round to see Emma lowering her hands from a tut, her eyes wild. Kady rolls her eyes.

“Bitch, please.” And then the door is slamming open, the force of Kady’s spell almost enough to send it flying off its hinges. “Let’s move!”

“Wait!” Emma attempts to follow, only to be flung back into the apartment with a twist of Kady’s hands. Her head makes contact with the wall with a dull thud as she slides back across the tiles. Eliot hesitates just long enough to check there’s no blood before following the girls, yanking the door shut behind him to hide her from view.

Clattering down the stairs, they don’t see the people climbing up until it’s too late. They race down flight after flight, aiming for the exit, only to flail to a halt as they suddenly find themselves face to face with four bland-looking individuals dressed in grey.

“Shit!” Eliot wheels round and scrambles back upstairs, Kady and Julia following suit. A loud yell from behind puts paid to any fantasies Eliot had about the Librarians not recognising them. As they hit the next floor Eliot makes to dash off to the left, aiming to find an apartment to break into and hide in, but Kady grabs him by the back of his waistcoat and hauls him back into the stairwell.

“Are you insane? We’ll be trapped! We’ve got to get out onto the roof, try to lose them up there.”

Eliot’s earlier predictions that an apartment on a higher floor would prove his lack of fitness to the world are unfortunately proved correct as they race towards the roof. His legs and lungs burn as they charge upwards yet he doesn’t dare stop, the clatter of shoes from behind telling him that the Librarians are only just out of reach.

Instinct has him jerking to the side and he yelps as a misty green projectile flies past, shattering a vase set into an alcove in the wall. Kady curses, ducking a second blast, and they round the corner to the final flight of stairs. A clearly labelled ‘No entry’ sign marks the roof as out of bounds but Eliot just whips out a hand and yanks it open, the group piling out and slamming the door behind them just in time to block another series of spells that thump into the wood and make it shudder. A quick gesture seals it shut, though Eliot doubts they have long.

“What now?” He pants, bent over with his hands on his knees, dignity be damned. Kady’s eyes dart about the space as she cases the area.

“This way. Follow me.” And then they’re off again, scrambling over the dividing wall and clattering across the neighbouring rooftop. They’ve only just made it to the third building in the row when Eliot hears the roof door slam open with a bang, a quick glance behind revealing the four grey-suited figures bursting out into the open air.

Kady curses, pausing just long enough to shoot a magic missile in their direction before picking up speed and leaping over the gap between buildings. Eliot follows, reaching out behind him with his power to help the much shorter Julia make the jump. The wind whips past his face, chafing his skin and pulling at his hair as he soars through the air and lands with a thump. He’s struggling for breath now, panting for air even as he fights the trembling of his legs beneath him. His waistcoat feels like a corset, tight and constricting; when Eliot put it on this morning he hadn’t been anticipating having to dash across rooftops like characters in a Jason Statham movie. More fool him.

They’re sliding their way across the sloped glass roof of yet another building when there’s a shout from the next rooftop over and two more Librarians emerge into view, ducking out of the way as Kady fires another desperate blast at them.

“We’ve got to lose them long enough to call Penny! Move down!” She calls, vaulting over the edge of the roof and landing with a crash on the fire escape below. Eliot and Julia follow, Eliot grunting with pain when he lands awkwardly, ankle twisting as he drops onto the unforgiving metal. He feels it start to give beneath him and pushes on, Julia’s small hand in his as she pulls him after her.

He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep going. Julia looks awful as well, face pinched and exhausted as they chase Kady through a maze of alleyways and side streets. It’s with an overwhelming sense of relief that they suddenly stumble out into a crush of people and canopies, the smell of fresh fruit and vegetables thick and heavy in the air. Here. They can lose the Librarians here. All they need is a minute or two to call Penny and bark their location at him. Kady already has her phone out, her pace deliberately slowing until she looks just like any other local wandering the market. Eliot mimics her, though he’s sure he looks far less calm and put together than she does. He pats uselessly at his hair and wishes he has a mirror.

He’s about to share this observation with Julia when she cries out sharply, hand jerking loose from his. Whirling, he swears as he sees that she’s caught between two Librarians, jerking her arms angrily but helplessly in a futile attempt to remove their grip. Almost immediately Eliot finds himself in the exact same situation as another pair loom up out of the crowd and seize him.

“Watch the outfit! Watch the outfit!” He barks, squirming as they force his hands behind him and into little cloth containers, looping some kind of cord around them until the sacks are so tight he can’t move his fingers.

 _Mittens_ , he thinks insanely to himself in disbelief. _I’m wearing prisoner mittens_.

He watches as they wrestle Julia into a similar getup, wondering if they don’t know about her inability to access her magic or are just following standard procedure. They’re certainly not treating her as any less of a threat than Eliot – probably wise, considering she’s almost managed to kick the male Librarian in the balls no less than three times already.

“Where’s your little friend, huh?” one of Eliot’s captors growls in his ear. He jerks away from him, wincing at the sour scent to his breath.

“Gone. We were too slow for her. She’s probably made it back home by now.” He snarls. The Librarian chuckles, tightening his grip on Eliot’s forearm as he starts steering him backwards.

“Guess you weren’t that friendly, huh? So sad. But at least we have you – Marcus was especially keen to get you.”

“Always glad to be in demand.” Eliot sneers. His eyes go to where Kady is crouched beneath a stall, her eyes wide and wary as she peers out from behind the fabric covering. Her phone is pressed to her ear.

 _Hold on._ She mouths. _He’s picking up._

 _No time. Get to Penny and then come find us._ He mouths back.

And then the Librarian tugs him away and the crowd swallows him up.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the change in fic rating and archive warnings. There are bad times ahead, people!

He wakes with a faint moan, head aching so badly it feels like his skull is trying to split itself apart.

By the time the throbbing has died down enough for him to feel safe opening his eyes, Eliot has had time to register several equally distressing things:

1) He’s still wearing those tight mitten monstrosities, though his hands are no longer tied behind his back.

2) This is not actually something to celebrate, as they are now tied to the arms of the chair he’s apparently sat in.

3) His legs are also fastened to the chair, bound ankle to knee with something tight and unforgiving.

4) There’s water dripping from somewhere above him, perfectly positioned to hit him directly on the head in the most irritatingly irregular way possible.

Forcing his eyes open, Eliot scans the room he’s being held in and instantly wonders at what point his life became a cliché. Because this? This is not just a room. It’s an actual warehouse; an abandoned one, most likely, judging from the stale mustiness to the air and the scattered piles of boxes that have clearly been forsaken to the rats’ appetites. Eliot takes it all in: the rough and dirty brickwork of the walls - the broken pallets propped against them - the collapsing shelves in the corner - and instantly knows that no one has been here in a long, long time.

He tilts his head back and laughs bitterly at the sight of bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The Library couldn’t have been more stereotypical with their choice of lair if they tried. He’s half expecting to see a mobster in a fedora walk through those doors any minute now and threaten to break Eliot’s fingers one-by-one.

As far as Eliot can see, there’s nothing in here that might be of use to him. Certainly nothing that he could reach, anyway. He’s slap bang in the middle of the room, far away from the walls and the doors; the closest thing to him is the chair his companion is tied to.

“Julia!” He hisses. He tries again when she doesn’t stir. “Julia!”

She remains limp and still, eyes obscured by the swoop of hair over her face. Eliot grits his teeth and curses. Whatever spell the Librarians used to knock them out must still be in effect. And even if by some miracle he’s able to divine some sort of way out of here he certainly can’t leave Julia behind. The Library have already proven themselves to be an entirely more dangerous animal than they assumed upon first encountering the organisation; he doesn’t want to think about what they might decide to do to Julia having lost one half of their spoils.

He tries to wiggle his fingers in his mittens and finds he can barely move them a few millimetres. There’s certainly nowhere near enough flexibility to cast. He tries calling her name again, louder this time, but it’s just as ineffective as before.

Which leaves Eliot just one option.

Muttering under his breath, Eliot presses the balls of his feet against the floor and shakily levers himself back only to swear and crash forward as the chair wobbles and threatens to send him over. Grimacing, he tries again and lets out a ‘ha!’ of triumph as he manages to make a small and awkward bunny hop towards Julia. He’s probably not moved more than a centimetre or so, but it still fills him with a sense of victory. He makes another successful hop. Then another. And another.

He’s doing it. He’s actually doing it. Granted, at this rate it’s going to take him half an hour to get there, but at least they have a chance of getting out of this clichéd joke of a…

He misjudges his latest attempt and overbalances, tilting over with a yelp and grunting as all the air in his lungs escapes in a rush as he smashes sideways into the hard floor. He lies there for a moment, stunned, eyes clenched shut against the nauseatingly spinning room. When he eventually manages to open them, it’s to the sight of Julia’s unpolished ankle boots just in front of his face.

Well. More than one way to skin a cat and all that.

Repressing all of the instincts warning him that this is a bad idea, Eliot tilts his head back as far as it can go and smashes it forward against Julia’s foot. When that achieves nothing more than bringing back his headache with a vengeance he groans and does it again, trying to ignore the bright hot throb of pain that shoots through him at the movement.

Julia stays silent and unmoving.

Eliot is just considering whether it’s worth trying again when the door is yanked open with a screech of poorly oiled hinges and a Librarian – young, but with his hair cut short in that way that suggests he’s prematurely balding and trying to hide it – comes in with a takeaway cup of coffee. He takes one look at Eliot and rolls his eyes, putting the coffee down on the floor and walking over to pick up Eliot’s chair. It takes a while for him to get the grip required and by the time he’s succeeded in getting Eliot upright and back under that infuriating drip of water another Librarian in glasses has come in and stolen the hot drink, leaning back against the wall and quirking his eyebrow mischievously at the first.

The balding Librarian shoots Eliot an unimpressed look as if it’s his fault.

“Well, I can see the rumours about your _delightful_ lack of forethought are true.” He sneers. “A more intellectual individual would have realised immediately that any attempt at escape was futile.”

Eliot smiles winningly at him, flashing just a few more teeth than are necessary. “Sadly I’ve never been the most reflective of characters. You’ll have to forgive me.”

The man steps closer and leans down, pushing forward into Eliot’s space.

“I’m afraid I’ve never been the most forgiving of characters.” He mocks. His voice is low, almost sibilant. “Do you know which organisation we represent?”

“The Library.”

The Librarian pulls back, a small smirk dancing about his mouth. To Eliot’s confusion he slips the mittens off his hands. “Well, well. There’s hope for you yet, Mr Waugh. Though your answer was, of course, as horribly imprecise as might be expected from someone of your impulsivity. We represent the Order of the Library of the Neitherlands. My name is Marcus and this is my colleague, Kenneth.”

Eliot can’t stop the snort of disbelief that explodes out of him at that. “Seriously? _Kenneth_?”

Marcus glares at him and Eliot shuts up. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. The Order dislikes having to act with force and threat – we are scholars, not thugs. But your little band weren’t cooperating and besides…if you hadn’t been lying about having an interest in acquiring the stones then you wouldn’t have fallen for our trap.”

“Look, why don’t we cut the villain monologue and just get to the part where you tell me what your plan is? Because let me tell you, this chair is far less comfortable than the things I’m usually tied to.”

It’s hilarious how the Librarian’s face twists in distaste at that. It’s even funnier when he leans forward in a clear attempt to be intimidating, resting his hands over Eliot’s freshly bared ones and covering them entirely as he locks eyes with the younger Magician.

“I wouldn’t be so merry if I were you,” Marcus hisses. This close, Eliot can see the poppy seed stuck between his front teeth. “We’ve already been pre-approved for whatever means are deemed necessary to get the stones, considering the danger they pose.” 

“What are you going to do? Papercut me to death?” Eliot quips. Marcus just smirks.

Eliot is suddenly aware that his hands are tingling where Marcus is touching him. He twitches, trying to get away from the unpleasant sensation, sucking in his breath sharply as the tingling sharpens and increases, boiling up inside of him until it feels like his blood is vibrating. Before he knows what’s happening he’s jerking futilely against his bonds, chair rocking under the force of his struggles as he tries to escape the lightning that is racing under his skin where Marcus is touching him and gathering in the base of his skull in a crushing vice that seems to squeeze the thoughts from him.

He’s only aware he’s yelling when Marcus abruptly lets go and the pain stops as quickly as it started, his raised voice fading away into a pained groan as he slumps forward. Looking down at his hands, he winces at the vicious black marks that have been left behind – it looks alarmingly like his flesh is charred and Marcus is brushing ash off his hands as he straightens up.

“Now, Eliot – do you mind if I call you Eliot? – where were we? Were you about to tell me what your little group of trouble-makers have done with the god stones? Or should we have a repeat performance?”

He moves his hand closer to Eliot’s and Eliot flinches instinctively. Marcus chuckles at that, lightly tracing a finger across the back of Eliot’s hand. “That’s it. You don’t want to have to go through that again, do you? There’s no point in putting yourself through pain for such a silly reason. Or do we need a little reminder of how it feels when I…”

“No!” Eliot says, blurting the word out before he can stop himself. Marcus watches him, a sneer masquerading as a smile smeared across his lips. Something deep and innate tells Eliot that Marcus would like nothing better than to make him scream. He shuts his eyes, unable to face what he’s about to do. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll tell you everything.”

“A wise choice.”

“I’ve never been very good with pain. So don’t…don’t do that again, alright? You don’t have to. I’ll tell you where to find the stones. We hid them, you see. In Central Park. We thought you might search the apartment at some point.”

“You hid them. In Central Park. Where anyone could find them.” Marcus sounds doubtful and Eliot surges ahead, very much aware of the throbbing pain in his hands.

“They’re safer than it sounds. They’re in a kind of pocket dimension – a gap between moments that can only be accessed with five people casting at the same time. It’s a ritual we found in a book.”

“Go on.”

“You need to wash your hands in a basin of goat’s milk and then rub them over your cheeks six times while reciting the phases of the moon. Then you need to all form a circle and hold hands for seven heartbeats – if one of you lets go too soon, you’ll have to start all over. When that’s done you need to remove your socks and shoes and feel the earth under your feet. You’ve just got the final stage then, but it’s really important so you can’t mess it up. You have to…”

His voice trails away, shrinking away into a quiet mumble as he speaks. He hears Marcus shift closer, a rustle of clothes as the Librarian bends down to hear better.

“What? What do we have to do, Eliot?” Marcus prompts, voice soft and gilded. Eliot grins.

“You have to strip each other naked and fuck a goat until morning.” He says loudly. “Any breed – the spell’s not fussy, and I can’t imagine your organisation is eith…”

“Enough!” Marcus bellows. The chair rocks as Marcus pushes himself back and Eliot opens his eyes to the glorious sight of the balding Librarian kicking the empty coffee cup across the room. Over by the wall, Kenneth’s eyes are flint as he stares in open disgust at Eliot.

It takes a moment for Marcus to calm down. Even when he turns to face Eliot again, his fingers are twitching as he needlessly straightens his tie. His expression, however, is blank.

“Fine. So you decided to be brave. More fool you.”

Eliot remembers his promise to his memory of Quentin and thinks wildly that this wasn’t what he meant as Marcus’ hands shoot out and take him by the cheeks. This time, the lightning crashes around his skull and feels like it’s trying to force its way out through his eyes, a horrifying fullness gathering behind his eyeballs as if they’re one step away from popping. He opens his mouth to scream and finds he can’t stop, his mouth just seeming to stretch wider and wider as the pain scratches at his insides, little fingers of agony clawing away from within as he writhes in Marcus’ grip and wails out his suffering.

He’s dimly aware of someone yelling his name and when Marcus steps away and he manages to stop the room from spinning he sees that Julia is awake and pulling helplessly at her restraints, face horrified. He wheezes for breath and tries to smile reassuringly at her – judging from her expression he does a poor job at it.

“What have you done to him?” She spits, chest heaving. Her eyes flash fire as she glances from Marcus to Kenneth and back to Eliot again. “What the _fuck_ have you been doing?”

Kenneth finally moves away from the wall, gliding across the warehouse floor until he’s directly behind Julia. He smiles, resting a proprietary hand on her shoulder and making her flinch.

“Ah. I see you’ve finally joined us, Miss Wicker. Don’t worry about your friend – the lasting damage is minimal with this spell. The flesh doesn’t start to necrotise until the fifth casting at least, and brain damage is only a factor after the seventh or eighth. It’s not even much at first – just a few long-term memories, ones that are faded and less anchored to our daily lives.”

Eliot’s breath catches, that familiar tang of fear slicking itself across the back of his tongue and leaving him choking on the possibilities. He knows exactly what memories the spell will jostle loose and rip away from him first. It won’t be memories of being ankle-deep in cow shit that go, much as Eliot would like to lose those. And it won’t be any of those hundreds of traumatic and upsetting mistakes he was forced to replay in his quest for a door out of his own mind.

What could be less anchored and tied to him than memories of a life he has never lived?

He remembers the first time he felt Teddy kick, Quentin’s hand trembling as he fumbled for Eliot’s and pressed it against Arielle’s stomach. The sheer, disbelieving wonder that spread through him as he felt that tiny impact against his hand, Quentin’s eyes hot and bright as he whispered in Eliot’s ear that this baby was his too.

He thinks about the time he was sick, trapped in bed and miserable. He’d been endlessly cycling from hot to cold and back again, never knowing whether to beg for more blankets or to throw them off, alternating between snapping at Quentin and pleading for his comforting touch. Quentin had made him the world’s worst banana bread with some sort of Fillorian fruit substitute, the final product lumpy and deflated in the middle. Quentin had pretended to be offended by Eliot’s horrified reaction to it, but Eliot had seen the way he held back laughter as Eliot demanded it was removed from the cottage immediately. Even the wildlife had refused to eat it – it had stayed outside for weeks until it eventually rotted away.

He thinks about losing Teddy’s first steps, or Arielle and Quentin’s wedding, or the first time Quentin told him he wanted every part of him, good and bad. He imagines losing all those simple, everyday moments such as the way Quentin sneezed uncontrollably whenever they dusted, or how Teddy used to hide their chalk whenever he wanted attention. Or the time they helped Arielle in the orchard and got distracted throwing over-ripe fruit at each other, culminating in Eliot getting a peach in his hair and pinning Quentin up against a tree, kissing him soundly even as Quentin quaked with laughter beneath his lips.

He feels sick.

What would come next? More grounded memories, maybe, like the first time he called Margo Bambi and wasn’t instantly flayed alive by her tongue. Or the moment he found that Brakebills existed. Or maybe the first sight of a disaster of a human being stumbling across the Sea.

It’s all unacceptable.

“I wouldn’t worry.” Kenneth is still talking. “The average person can take a good ten or twelve hits before they begin to lose their grip on who they are.”

“You sadistic fuck.” Julia growls and Kenneth tightens his grip on her collarbone, making her wince.

“Are you going to cooperate? It will save yourself and your friend an awful lot of pain.”

She glances at Eliot, face wretched. He stares back, trying not to give anything away, and he watches the determination that comes into her eyes before it is chased away by pained apology.

“Go to hell.”

Kenneth sighs.

Julia screams.

Bright, luminous green traces itself up the veins in her neck, spidering across her cheekbones and sparking across the open void of her mouth. Eliot swears and struggles against his bonds, watching helplessly as Julia spasms uncontrollably under Kenneth’s touch.

Finally, he lets go. The green fades, leaving a burnt pattern across her skin in its place. And Eliot suddenly realises that things are about to get even worse.

“What the…” Kenneth grabs Julia by the chin and tilts her face away, staring as the burns begin to fade immediately. Within moments her skin is smooth and healthy again, as if nothing ever happened. Marcus abandons Eliot to get a closer look, forming a square with his fingers and examining Julia through it.

“Well, well, Miss Wicker,” Kenneth breathes, “You are a surprise.” He tightens his grip on Julia’s face and she screams again as more poisonous green light ricochets through her veins. He lets go and laughs as all trace of it vanishes once again.

“Fascinating. Truly fascinating.” He makes a sharp gesture with his hand and Julia shrieks as her left hand crumples in on itself with a stomach-churning crunch of bone and gristle. It’s not enough for Kenneth – he presses a finger against her cheek and slowly drags it downwards as he mutters something, the gentleness of his touch all the more terrible for the brutal splitting of flesh that follows behind it. Julia makes a horrible high-pitched keening noise in the back of her throat, shivering as her cheek knits itself back together again. Below, her hand jerkily straightens and flexes, each finger snapping into place one by one until it is perfect once more.

Marcus shares a look with Kenneth. “We’d better inform Everett.”

Everett. Eliot files the name away even as Kenneth nods and pulls a mobile out of his pocket, walking quickly from the room. The door squeals shut behind him and they are alone with Marcus once more.

Julia looks like she’s considering attempting a charge at Marcus, chair and all, and Marcus can clearly read her intentions as well as Eliot can. He snorts, rolling his eyes.

“Don’t get any ideas. Do you really think it’s just myself and Kenneth here? This is a high-priority issue. We have several more Librarians outside.”

“We must really seem dangerous then.” Eliot observes.

Marcus’ lip curls. “Not dangerous – a nuisance. We don’t want you escaping and worming away to cause havoc for the entire world just because you can’t control the power you seek.”

“And you can?” Julia snaps. Marcus ignores her, brushing an imaginary speck of lint from the cuff of his shirt.

“If I’m honest, I’d expected that little band of yours to show up for an attempted rescue by now. Are things tense between you all? Have you fallen apart? Things always get strained when it comes to world-altering spellcasting, don’t they?”

“Is that what your plan was then?” Julia bites back. “To just keep torturing us until the others turn up and rescue us? We’re just bait?”

Marcus’ face is terrifyingly blank when he turns to her, eyes flat and cold and dark as he gazes down at her. “No. The plan was to make you give up the location of the stones. And, if you refused, to make you a warning to the others – see how willing they were to turn the stones over once we released your gibbering shells to them.”

Eliot flinches at the image Marcus presents. He’s able to imagine it all too well – Alice or Kady scrying for them and making Penny investigate, only for him to bring back something that wasn’t Eliot or Julia anymore. What happened to Magicians that went insane? Eliot has never heard of any, which suddenly seems very strange. Is there a special facility for those who need it? Or is the expectation that their loved ones put them out of the world’s misery?

He has to get out of here. He can’t do this to Margo again.

“Of course,” Marcus gloats, moving to stroke Julia’s face and grinning as she jerks her head away, “With this little revelation about your abilities that is no longer an option for _you_. We’ll have to take you back to the Library and keep you nice and safe in a cell. I’m sure we can discover a whole lot of knowledge from whatever hybrid thing you are.”

“Get your hands off her.” Eliot snarls. His fingers twitch uselessly as he thinks of all the ways he could blast Marcus across the room if his bindings were just that little further back along his wrist.

Marcus raises an eyebrow. “How sweet. I see you have quite the protective streak in you.” The tone of his voice clearly suggests that he doesn’t find it sweet at all – if anything, Eliot has just given him another weakness to paw at until it cracks him open. He does step away from Julia at least, though Eliot isn’t sure if that’s a blessing or not considering the way he’s looking at Eliot now.

“You know,” Eliot chokes out, “This isn’t exactly what I saw coming the first time we met the kooky Librarian with the glasses and puppet arms.”

Marcus pauses, a flash of interest lighting up his face. “You met Zelda? I had no idea. She’s wonderfully industrious, isn’t she? Probably the hardest working Librarian in the Main Branch. Tender-hearted though. I wouldn’t be surprised if Everett’s kept his little protégée in the dark about all of this: she’d throw a fit if she knew what we were doing here.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as a sign you’re on the wrong side?” Eliot tries, “Generally when you have to hide what you’re doing from your colleagues that means what you’re doing is horribly transgressive.”

Marcus shakes his head pityingly at Eliot, looking for all the world like Eliot had just said the most foolish thing possible. “Sacrifices have to be made in order to protect the flame of knowledge. By the time this is all over we’ll have the stones and she’ll understand why we did this. She’s a smart woman – Everett will make her see.”

Eliot files this information away as well. Zelda seemed to be a Librarian of some power when they first ran across her in the Neitherlands – if she’s being lied to by this Everett character, perhaps she’ll become an ally if they reveal the truth to her. Of course, she might also just attack them on sight as threats to the Library, but at this point every possible advantage is worth investigating.

Slowly, deliberately, Marcus strolls around Eliot’s chair and behind, out of view.

“You know,” he says almost conversationally, voice absent and only half-focused, “The first time I did this I cried. Very embarrassing for all involved. Luckily for me I had Kenneth to see me through. He helped me realise I had a gift for it. And who was I to deprive the world of such a gift?”

Eliot opens his mouth to reply with a devastating comment about gift receipts and returns.

Then Marcus is putting his hands on Eliot again and words escape him, the taste of copper bright and bitter in his mouth.

* * *

Eliot lets his head fall back down, resting his chin on his chest.

He aches all over. His body throbs with a thousand invisible agonies, every nook and crevice of him sore and tender and feeling like they’re stuffed with broken glass. Inside his mouth, his tongue feels thick and swollen and he wonders if he bit it at some point during Marcus’ oh-so-tender administrations. His hands are a mess of raised, blackened welts that give way to cracked red skin that oozes. He wonders what the bits of him that he can’t see look like and suspects he probably doesn’t want to know.

The world keeps shrinking and expanding at the edges of his vision, a disconcerting and nauseating effect that makes every given moment a lottery on whether he’s going to throw up or not. He thinks about what Kenneth said about brain damage and tries to remember how many times Marcus has shocked him. Five? Six? What if it’s more and he’s already forgetting? It’s certainly been enough to carve the hurt into his very bones; even when Marcus isn’t touching him the pain continues, sharp and biting and radiating through every nerve in his body. Duller than when Marcus is actively casting, but still there. Still callous and cruel. Even the light drip of water from above feels like bricks falling upon his forehead.

Remembering Kenneth’s comment about necrotising flesh he looks down at his hands again, noting the purple-grey discolouration spreading from his cracked skin. They feel oddly numb, as if they’re no longer part of him, and that’s the most worrying thing of all. Even if he makes it out of here alive, Eliot wonders if he’s ever going to be able to cast again. He tries to twitch his little finger and hisses in agony, tears of pain rising up as fire burns itself through his veins.

Not looking good on the casting front, then.

Julia, in contrast, looks untouched apart from her tight, hollow expression. Her eyes are pained and creased, her hair a mess and her make-up smeared from her agonised tears. But all the marks of Kenneth‘s abuse have faded from her skin as if never there. Even the gaping wound torn into her belly is gone, though the ragged hole in her shirt is not.

The Librarians themselves are taking a break from their torture at the moment. With their jackets removed and draped over the packing crates in the corner of the room, waistcoats unbuttoned and their sleeves rolled up as they sip coffee and joke around, they look disturbingly just like two office workers relaxing together on a hot day. Eliot hates them more than he thinks he’s hated anyone. Even the Beast. Even the Monster. Even _Todd_.

Painfully rolling his head to the side, Eliot manages to aim his face in Julia’s direction.

“Hey. How are you holding up?” He’s faintly alarmed by the raspy, thin quality to his voice. It sounds broken and fragile, as if the slightest wisp of breeze could steal it away and let it vanish into the sky. He guesses that’s what comes from hours of non-stop screaming.

At least, he assumes it’s hours. He has no real concept of time passing in here. It certainly feels like hours.

“I’m tired and a little achy, but okay. I’m more worried about you – Marcus has really been going for you.” Julia’s face is pinched with worry as she looks back at him. Her eyes settle on his cheeks, on the places where Marcus gripped him tight, and her lips twitch and tighten. Putting her expression together with the pulsing pain that came from speaking, he thinks he can safely assume that his face doesn’t look much better than his hands do right now, though at least it hasn’t gone as blank and empty of sensation as his hands have.

“It’s just because I can’t heal like you…” He tries and Julia shakes her head in frustration.

“That’s not it. I’ve been watching him, Eliot. Kenneth is interested in what my body can do, but Marcus? It’s pure sadism. He is enjoying every _second_ of what he’s doing to you.”

“Naturally.” They both jolt as a shadow falls over them. It’s Marcus, quick torturer’s hands efficiently buttoning up his waistcoat even as he bares his teeth at them. “It’s not every day you get a chance to get revenge on the man responsible for the deaths of your closest friends, after all.”

For a moment, Eliot is confused. Then he remembers the blue-eyed Librarian that lingered after the others made their threats and left, her voice frozen and bitter as she looked at him with nothing but hatred.

_‘I hope it was worth the deaths of so many good men and women to save your life, Eliot Waugh.'_

“You can’t be serious!” Julia protests, “It’s not his fault! He wasn’t even in control of his body at the time!”

Marcus snarls, whirling on her. “Exactly! He messed with powers beyond his comprehension and instead of accepting the price his little friend decided to pin the cost on the Library instead. The blood of the Library is on Mr Waugh’s hands and I plan on making sure he pays for that.”

He grabs for Eliot’s face, tilting his head back and digging his thumbs in painfully just under Eliot’s eyes as if fighting the urge to gouge. Eliot’s stomach swoops at the thought of what it will feel like to have that spell cast so close to such delicate flesh. He’ll probably go blind.

“Stop! Stop it!” Julia is shouting now, voice high and panicked as she registers the danger. “I’ll tell you about the stones! I’ll tell you everything!”

Marcus never looks away from Eliot, thumbs pressing further into the shallow caverns of his sockets even as he laughs mockingly at Julia’s offer. “Let’s be honest, Miss Wicker.” His voice is steel and ice now, no trace of humanity left in it as he meets Eliot’s terrified gaze unblinkingly. “You and Eliot here are never going to give up the location of the stones. It’s just another distraction tactic. But I’m afraid your time has run out now – Eliot deserves everything he’s had and everything he’s about to get.”

The skin beneath Eliot’s eyes starts to vibrate, a steady tingle that quickly builds to a sharp buzz of sensation that shivers through him without mercy. He cries out, bracing himself for the slicing agony that is about to follow.

Then suddenly Marcus’ hands are ripped from his face and he vanishes from Eliot’s view. Eliot stares sightlessly up at the metal struts of the ceiling, chest rising and falling uncontrollably as he trembles and gasps for breath, still caught up in the terror of what just happened.

A loud thump echoes around the empty warehouse and Eliot peels his gaze away, forcing his eyes down and staring as he tries to comprehend what he’s seeing. Confused and clearly frightened, Marcus squirms helplessly against an unknown power as he slides up the exposed brickwork of the wall, arms and legs spreading as if he’s some kind of insect pinned to a museum display. Eliot jerks his head towards Julia and she shakes her head wildly, eyes wide and stunned.

“It’s not me!”

“Marcus!” Kenneth bellows, jerking up from where he’s been lounging against a pile of boxes. Striding determinedly forward, he’s already flicking his fingers through the tuts for an attack when he abruptly crashes to the floor as if pushed by a giant invisible hand. He struggles weakly against the force, hands scrabbling uselessly against the concrete for purchase as he slides across it and up the wall until he’s pinned next to Marcus.

For a moment, the warehouse is silent, the only noise Marcus and Kenneth’s grunts of frustration as they arch and strain against whatever is holding them aloft.

Then Marcus starts screaming, body jerking against his invisible bonds, and between one blink and the next Quentin is there in front of him, sparking hand pressed against Marcus’ throat.

“Not so much fun when you’re on the receiving end, hmm?” The niffin spits, eyes flashing as he glares up at his captive. “Don’t the Library teach you to only dish out what you can handle?”

“Q…?” Eliot breathes in shock. Quentin ignores him, vibrating with fury as he wedges his hand further into the soft, tender flesh of Marcus’ throat. The Librarian continues to scream, his pitch climbing higher and higher as the agony continues.

“Q!” He croaks, the name scraping past the sandpaper desert that his throat has become. His voice, quiet and broken as it is, is easily drowned out by Marcus’ wails. “Q, please...”

The niffin cocks his head, glancing back at Eliot before releasing Marcus and stepping back. The Librarian slumps, sobbing. His throat is charred and blackened, leaking unattractively as he swallows back pained gasps. Quentin ignores him, striding to Eliot’s side and smoothing his hair back from his forehead as he inspects him.

“Eliot. Eliot, it’s okay. I’m here now. You’re safe.” His voice is low and urgent, vibrating with emotion. Eliot can’t hold back the breathless sob that escapes him as Quentin cradles his face in his hands. His eyes look almost brown again in the shadowy light of the warehouse.

The niffin’s face darkens as he takes in the ugly stains painting Eliot’s hands, throat and face, the drip of dried blood under his nose. He traces the stinging marks under Eliot’s eyes without touching them and Eliot watches as Quentin’s eyes become cold blue shards of ice once more.

“They’ll pay for this.” He spins round, hand outstretched, and Marcus yelps as his head cracks back against the wall. Quicker than the eye can follow Quentin is in front of him again and pressing both hands against his face in a copy of how Marcus had held Eliot earlier. Marcus howls, kicking out and writhing pathetically as his skin starts to blacken and rot around Quentin’s hands, red and purple flames of infection spreading out across his exposed skin. His nose starts to bleed, crimson pouring freely down his face and dripping off his chin. Up above, his eyeballs are taking on a distinctly pink tinge.

“ _Christ_.” Eliot watches in horror as Marcus starts to bleed from his eyes and ears, screams fading to choked gurgles and nonsensical whimpers as his face swells and shifts from purple to black. Eyes rolling in his head, the Librarian arches off the wall in one final expression of bowed agony before falling limp and still, eyes pointed blankly at the floor.

Beside him, Kenneth lets out a high-pitched moan of terror, straining against the wall in panic as Quentin slowly shifts his gaze from Marcus’ suspended corpse to him.

“I didn’t touch him! Marcus was in charge! Please!”

Quentin slowly tilts his head like a cat studying its prey and smiles. “Wow. You’re pretty gutless, aren’t you?”

Kenneth nods his head frantically, babbling. “Yes! I’m weak, I’m nothing, I’m not a threat. So you should just…”

“You don’t _look_ gutless though,” Quentin interrupts, “Maybe we should rectify that.”

Kenneth’s eyes fly wide. “What?”

It’s too late. Quentin makes a sharp gesture and Kenneth wails and vibrates as a line of red blooms across his white shirt. Eliot looks away as the cut gets wider, though nothing can shut out the unmistakeable slopping sound of the older Librarian’s guts slipping to the floor.

Julia’s breath is a quick, frightened rasp beside him. Eliot can’t bear to look, focusing instead on twisting against his bindings in the hope of finding a weakness now that he’s no longer being watched.

Then suddenly his wrists and ankles are free and Quentin is there in front of him again, hands cupping Eliot’s elbows as he helps him stand. “Easy. Easy, Eliot.”

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.” Eliot quips tiredly. It’s easier than reacting to what Quentin’s just done. Quentin chuffs out a little laugh at that, reaching out to clasp Eliot’s hands in his. Fearing a repeat of Marcus’ casting, Eliot tenses as they tingle. But nothing else happens and when Quentin lets go Eliot realises that the ruined and blackened mess of skin there looks normal again. He flexes his fingers experimentally and barely stifles his sob of relief when he realises that he can move them without pain.

“Q…” He whispers. His voice catches in his throat, scratchiness only half a product of emotion, and Quentin frowns. Softly, tenderly, the niffin slowly smoothes his hands up and across Eliot’s throat and cheeks, trailing soothing coolness in his wake. Tracing Eliot’s hairline with delicate fingers, he slides his touch down until he has Eliot’s face cupped gently in his hands.

“I hate that they touched you.” He breathes, leaning in close. Eliot shivers as Quentin’s finger brushes that spot behind his left ear that’s always left him weak. There’s an odd quality to the air, as if the space between them is spun with silver and sapphire. “They don’t get to touch you.”

“Quentin…”

“When I realised you’d been captured I was ready to turn the world inside out to find you. You’re mine, Eliot Waugh. Not theirs. Mine.” His eyes are steely blue and determined, a feral wildness there that does nothing to hide the chaotic magic swirling inside of him. Eliot wants to fall into his arms, wants to flee, wants to stand here for all eternity so that he never has to choose.

Then he catches sight of Marcus and Kenneth’s mutilated corpses suspended against the wall and reality crashes back in.

“We have to go.” He says shakily, pulling back sharply. Quentin pouts but lets his hands fall without argument, turning towards the door before he swivels back, considering.

“I assume you would prefer if we took her with us?” He asks, gesturing carelessly towards Julia as if she isn’t even there. Eliot nods and Quentin sighs, lifting a hand and clicking his fingers. The ropes surrounding her fall loose and Quentin hoists her up by her wrists when she doesn’t move fast enough for him, ignoring the way she flinches at his touch. She looks pale and sick, her eyes continuously darting back to where the Librarians are stuck to the wall.

Quentin sees her looking and laughs. “Casualties happen. Remember the talking trees?”

Julia swallows. “I didn’t have my Shade then.”

“Snap!” Quentin beams. “Neither do I!”

He turns away and Julia shoots Eliot a loaded look, slowly tapping her chest with raised eyebrows. Eliot spreads his hands to signal his own fractured understanding. Either Quentin is lying or he has no idea that something is clearly different between himself and the average niffin – at this stage, Eliot would be willing to bet it’s some twisted tangle of the two. Quentin has never been particularly self-aware and it wouldn’t be surprising to find that has carried over even after his semi-death.

A loud clang rings out, making them both jump. “Door’s open.” Quentin calls, watching dispassionately as the steel frame ripples and follows its companion to the floor with a strangely liquid thud. Twirling a finger into an ostentatious gesture towards the new hole in the wall, he grins at his two old friends. “After you.”

* * *

The battered service corridor they venture out into has clearly seen better days. What little paint was originally splashed over the cheap plastering has long since faded, the remaining colour scraped and chipped by careless workers. Even the locks on the doors have given up the ghost, leaving the various offices and storage rooms they stumble past open and exposed. Eliot catches sight of a half-collapsed shelving unit in one and can’t help but wonder exactly how long the building has stood empty and gathering dust.

They make it to the large open space of the loading area without incident and for a moment Eliot dares to hope that they’ve made it out unnoticed.

But of course, that would be far too easy.

They’re only a few steps into the loading bay, the large rectangle of light that makes up the entrance a glorious beacon to freedom, when the sound of running footsteps suddenly bursts into being behind them. Eliot chances a glance behind him as he and Julia pick up the pace and swears as a Librarian frantically wheels into view, leather oxfords sliding hopelessly against the tile as he erupts out of the service corridor the trio have just left.

“The prisoners have escaped!” The Librarian yells, fingers already moving into the fluid shapes of battle magic. “They’re making for the…shit, is that a _niffin_?!”

Quentin spins and gives a shallow bow, smiling even as he wiggles his fingers and sends the Librarian flying. “It is!” He calls back, seemingly unphased by the sickening crunch the Librarian makes as he collides with a large crate, back bowed at an impossible angle and head twisted too far to the side. If anything he seems to be amused by it, the corners of his mouth slowly peeling upwards as he surveys his work.

Another Librarian rounds the corner from an adjacent corridor, eyes widening as she takes in the broken body of her colleague. “Himesh!” She stumbles backwards, feet skidding uselessly over the floor as she instantly forgets about confronting the escaping prisoners in favour of getting away. Except it’s too late – Eliot blinks and Quentin is already on her, lifting her up by the throat as she flails and kicks her legs like some desperate animal caught in a trap.

“Now,” Eliot hears him muse as he dashes for the exit, “what should I do with you, hmm?”

The Librarian gurgles.

He and Julia are almost within touching distance of the light spilling through the entrance when there’s a whisper of air around them and the ground around them suddenly lights up purple. Eliot curses, stumbling as the floor beneath his feet trembles and cracks apart. He trips and flails for purchase, grabbing for support and finding only the already unstable Julia, sending the both of them to their knees. Before they can so much as attempt to get up there’s a whirlwind of dirt and building materials and when the dust settles they’re trapped in a cage of earth and steel. 

“Shit.” Eliot reaches out to test the strength of the bars and yelps when a zing of pain jolts through him as his fingers brush the rigid structure. He rapidly crosses and uncrosses his fingers in an unlocking charm, weaving the digits together before making the sharp cutting motion that should force any fastening open…except that the atmosphere stays dead and empty of any magical current. “ _Shit_!”

“Eliot…” Panicked fingers dig into his shoulder and Eliot glances up to see six Librarians emerging from behind various towers of boxes. He takes a moment to be impressed that they apparently warranted five separate teams guarding them – that’s more bodies than they used to have guarding all four kings and queens in Fillory’s throne room, for gods’ sake – before stiffening as he registers the magic already spun within the grips of their captors. One woman even has a fireball delicately balanced upon her fingertips.

A quick search of the space within their cage reveals nothing of any use except a rusty wrench. Shrugging, Eliot grabs it and lobs it between the bars anyway, watching resentfully as the Librarian with a fireball uses it to send the wrench spinning off into the shadows. Show-off.

“Talk about overkill.” He mutters. Julia elbows him sharply in the side.

“Focus!” She hisses. Eliot wants to ask her what exactly he’s meant to be focusing on here – it’s not exactly like they have a myriad of options available to them for escape – but his attention is drawn by the female Librarian that is stepping forward and out of the tense line the group has formed. Chest thrown forward and hips angled back, she’s halfway into a battle magic pose he’s seen Kady pull multiple times when she cries out, straining against nothing as she floats into the air before whipping backwards into the windshield of the solitary remaining truck and lying still, shattered glass in her hair and blood already starting to pool beneath her on the hood. Her face is frozen in a rictus of pain and fear, pretty painted mouth open in a scream she never got to give. 

As one, the Librarians forget Eliot and Julia and shift to face the bigger threat. On the other side of the loading bay, Quentin rolls his eyes and spreads his arms wide in careless incredulity.

“Oh, come on. Do you really think you’re any threat to me?” He mocks. He gets nothing in reply except a slight shifting of stance, the miniscule tensing of shoulder blades as their owners ready themselves for conflict. A host of grim, hostile faces meet the niffin’s derisive gaze without shame, every inch of them screaming that they’re ready and willing to fight.

Eliot notices that the one on the left is trembling and feels an unwanted stab of pity.

The two sides stare each other down in a silent standoff that seems to stretch on for eternity, broken only by the slow slide of the female Librarian’s body off the truck. Quentin looks down at it, cold blue eyes taking in the untidy pile it makes in its crimson pool, and raises a scornful eyebrow.

“Funny – the last time I saw so much Librarian blood being spilled I wanted to throw up. I have no problem with it now.”

One of the Librarians jerks at that, feet shuffling as they brace themselves against the floor and shift into a more aggressive casting form. “Quentin Coldwater. So this was your fate after you stole the world’s magic away and set a monster loose in our hallowed halls. Your absence had been noted.”

“I’m touched.”

“I lost friends in that battle.” The Librarian hisses. Quentin smiles. It’s an odd thing – both too wide and too thin at the same time. It’s a thousand miles away from the warm smile that used to echo Quentin’s spaniel heart and it makes something inside of Eliot twist uncomfortably to see it.

“I felt sorry for them then,” Quentin sighs. His voice is soft, confessional. “I wanted to hide away from all the screaming, pretend it wasn’t happening. Yet I kept going because I was willing to sacrifice them if it meant getting Eliot back.” He pauses, tilting his head slightly. “Now I feel nothing and you tried to take Eliot away from me again – how did you think that was going to go?”

The Librarian roars furiously, flicking his fingers forward as he throws a spell; Quentin just holds a hand up and diverts it, smiling implacably as he slings the energy back round into the Librarian that was trembling earlier. The man makes a startled noise before keeling over without fanfare, eyes blankly open and blood seeping from a deep wound in his chest.

There’s a moment of stillness as they all stare at his crumpled body.

Then chaos erupts as the Librarians all rush Quentin as one.

Eliot watches numbly as Quentin cuts his way through them, dispatching them one after another. One’s wail is cut off as he sinks through the floor until only his eyes and hair are exposed, nose and mouth submerged in concrete. Another doubles over, coughing up thick rivulets of dark red blood and gasping uselessly for breath. A third shrieks as Quentin makes a cutting motion with his hand and their arms drop to the floor, eyes rolling wildly in their sockets in delirious panic before Quentin sighs and puts a hand straight through their chest, pulling out their heart.

By the time the bloodbath is over the air is thick with the heavy scent of copper and fear. Eliot wraps an arm around Julia as she briefly hides her face in his shoulder, grimly looking through the bars of their cage at the pile of corpses surrounding Quentin. His body trembles with the urge to do something, _anything_ , but there’s nothing he can do. He’s powerless here.

Quentin still looks pristine and untouched even in the midst of his destruction. The only thing painting his face is the cruel smile that dances about his lips as he circles the one remaining survivor who’s knelt in front of him. He’s young – younger than Marcus was and certainly younger than any of the other Librarians they’ve seen today. He might be even younger than Eliot himself is; he certainly looks it right now, blanched white and babbling as he is.

“Oh, please. Please. Not like this. I don’t want to…” Quentin crouches down in front of him and the Librarian flinches away, keening. “I’m sorry. I understand now. We shouldn’t have touched them. We should have found another way. But please, please, just let me go.”

Tutting, Quentin shakes his head in mock disapproval at the young Librarian’s plea. “I don’t think I can do that.” His voice is soft, almost painfully gentle as he leans forward to catch the Librarian’s gaze with his own. “How am I to know that you won’t go on a rampage seeking revenge for what happened here today?”

The Librarian sobs, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as he bows his head and weeps. “I won’t! I swear it. I swear…I just want to get out of this. I just want to go home.”

“You sound like you mean it.” Quentin muses. The Librarian nods frantically. His eyes are wide now, a spark of life reflected there as he senses the possibility of escape.

“I do! I really do! I just want to get out of here and go home. I’ll leave you all alone, leave the organisation – I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to help conserve knowledge, to protect the world from what it wasn’t ready for. I never knew things could go this far…I just wanted to…”

His voice stutters out as Quentin reaches out and trails a flickering finger down his cheek, tracing the tear tracks left there. Pulling his hand back, the niffin sits back on his heels and regards the Librarian silently, tilting his head in consideration. For a moment, Eliot dares to hope.

Then a wicked smirk crosses Quentin’s face and he sings out, “Bored now!” He shoots a spread hand forward and the Librarian’s skin flies off him in one horrifically smooth motion, leaving him red and raw. Blood flies everywhere, sizzling away mid-air before it can touch Quentin but painting everything else in the vicinity a brilliant, startling scarlet.

Julia retches, dropping to her knees. Eliot feels like doing the same but swallows it back, shattered porcelain clogging his throat and rendering him mute. He can’t look away from the pathetic mass of flesh that used to be a person.

Quentin saunters up to the cage and brushes it lightly with a finger, watching impassively as it crumbles away into nothing. He frowns when Eliot jerks away from the hand he reaches out with.

“Quentin…what have you done?” Eliot chokes out, finally finding his voice. Quentin looks back at the skinless body of the Librarian and shrugs.

“Got him out of the way.”

“That was unnecessary, Quentin! That was…that was…”

Quentin meets his eyes, unrepentant and dark. Feral. “What was needed to keep you from harm. I’d kill them all. Every Librarian. Every person in the Neitherlands. Everyone. I’d kill them all if it meant keeping you safe.”

Eliot looks back at this alien creature and wonders, not for the first time, if they’re too late. If even if they do find a way to fully bring back Quentin’s Shade they’ll find it no longer fits, its owner twisted into a new and wholly unrecognisable shape. He feels Julia tremble against his legs.

An empty bottle spins across the floor and he looks up to see a final pair of Librarians fleeing. Quentin makes a move towards them but Eliot’s hand shoots out and grabs him by the shoulder, fingers white-knuckle tight on the crackling construct of magic beneath them.

“No!” Quentin stills immediately, turning back to look at him. Eliot shivers and closes his eyes. Something inside of him aches. “Let’s just go home. Please.”

His voice is barely louder than a whisper, lost to the vast space. Quentin regards him for a moment before shrugging and moving towards the light, beckoning over his shoulder. “Come on, then. I’ll keep an eye out and make sure no one comes near.”

Eliot’s hands tremble as he reaches down to help Julia to her feet. Her skin has the ashy quality of the recently bereaved, with shadows in her eyes that he doesn’t remember seeing this morning. Shadows that Quentin has put there.

“What now?” She breathes, hands small and lost in his own. He squeezes back and stays silent.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t _know_.

* * *

The way home is quiet and clear. No one pays attention as Eliot and Julia stumble into the nearest subway and huddle together on the bench, heads close together and hands entwined. Every now and then Eliot catches sight of Quentin from the corner of his eye, a blue flicker at the edges of his vision, but the niffin says nothing, perhaps sensing how close to the edge Eliot is right now.

He follows them into the apartment building but hangs back as they call the elevator, hovering silently behind them as the doors slide open and they step inside. It’s only when the doors are closing and the view of the lobby is reduced to a thin strip that the niffin shoots them a wink and vanishes. Eliot clings to Julia and tells himself he’s relieved.

When they get upstairs the door flies open before they can even touch it, concerned, frantic hands pulling them inside. Penny immediately divests Eliot of Julia and holds her close to him, voice a low murmur as he buries a hand in her hair and whispers vows of vengeance and protection that are too quiet for Eliot to hear. Alice flutters around the three of them, inspecting Eliot and Julia through coloured glass and hissing at whatever she can see.

Kady thrusts a drink into Eliot’s hand and he drains it without even checking to see what it is. He regrets it immediately, pulling a face as the sickly taste of cheap Jack and coke registers.

“Penny arrived a few moments after you’d vanished. We came back here and tried to scry for you, but there was no sign. What happened?” She presses. Eliot passes an exhausted hand over his face and rubs at his eyes. He feels bruised, brittle and tender to the touch. He feels exposed.

“Oh, the usual hijinks. Witty repartee, threats upon our persons. Some light torture, but you can’t win it all.”

“Torture?” Kady’s face is concerned as she immediately starts examining him for injuries, frowning as she finds none.

“Don’t worry, my dashing good looks are intact. Quentin healed me.”

“He found you then?”

“Oh, he found us alright.” He says bitterly.

“What happened? It was Alice’s idea to summon him when we couldn’t trace you. She thought he’d have a better shot.”

“And she was right.” Eliot finds Alice and shoots her a quick, pained smile. “If Quentin hadn’t turned up when he did I’d be a mindless wreck by now.”

“What happened to the Librarians? Do you think they’ll come after you again?” Alice prompts.

Eliot laughs. Even he can hear how sharp and unpleasant the sound is. “Not those particular Librarians. Quentin killed almost all of them.” He shivers, thinking again of the hunk of meat left lying on the floor. “He went full on _Buffy_ season 6 Willow on one of them.”

Kady winces and Penny whistles. He sounds both disgusted and impressed.

Alice looks between them, confused. “I don’t know what that means.”

Penny makes a passably good impression of someone having all their skin flayed off.

“Oh.” Alice’s voice is small and horrified. Eliot knows exactly how she feels right now.

Julia wraps her arms around herself, looking tiny and shaken. “It’s like the Monster all over again. Except this is actually Q, not some god using his body like a meat puppet.” She winces, shooting Eliot an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

Eliot shrugs. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

“Did they touch you? Or just Eliot?” Penny asks, tilting Julia’s face left-to-right under the lights to get a better look at her. Eliot chooses to ignore the implied slight of ‘just Eliot’ there, virtuously chalking it up to Penny’s stress and fear over his girlfriend’s kidnapping.

“They know about me now. I healed from what they did and they contacted their superior.” Julia confesses. Penny’s mouth tightens. He knows as well as Julia does that that paints yet another target on their backs.

“I can’t see any permanent damage.” Alice reassures her, checking once more through the glass. “Did Quentin heal you too, or were your powers enough?”

“He didn’t need to. As fast as they did anything my body just fixed itself.” She overbalances slightly, grabbing onto Penny’s shoulder for support, and shoots him a weak smile. “Think it took a lot out of me though.”

“That’s it. You and I are going to have a nice long lie-down together.” Penny decides. Julia must really be feeling rough for she makes no attempt to argue as Penny leads her off towards their room, just leaning into the arm he wraps around her waist and resting her head against his shoulder.

Kady watches them go, something fragile and tender in her expression. For once, Eliot thinks the look might be aimed more at her friend than her lover’s doppelganger.

“I need to go punch something, let the tension out.” She mutters. Translation: she’s spent the entire day worrying over them and imagining the worst. Eliot can’t help but feel touched. He watches her climb the stairs to her bedroom, knows that in a minute they’re going to hear the dull smack of the sandbag she keeps up there.

Left alone with Alice, he shoots her a tired smile and blinks at how tense she looks. She’s practically vibrating on the spot.

“Did I do the right thing,” she asks, “getting Quentin involved?”

“Well, I’m not a brain-dead shell, so that’s got to count for something.” He says lightly. Alice bites her lip at the reminder of what he’s been through.

“He was so _angry_.” She murmurs. Her voice is barely loud enough to be heard. “He tried to pretend at first that it didn’t matter, but it was obvious it did. He was almost incandescent with it.”

Eliot thinks of Quentin in that warehouse – all rage and fury and righteous vengeance – and wonders what he would have done if he’d found Eliot too late to save his mind. Would he have left without comment, disgusted by what he saw? Or would he have razed that warehouse to the ground?

Alice is still talking, filling the gaps left by Eliot’s unusual silence in a transparent attempt to talk them past the trauma.

“So, something positive at least?” She tries, uncomfortably tucking a strand of hair behind her right ear. “It’s another sign that we’re on the right track. If you were just a toy to him than he wouldn’t have cared enough to go and rescue you.”

“He told us that he didn’t have a Shade.” He whispers.

“What?”

“He was reminding Julia of her tree murdering days and she reminded him that she didn’t have her Shade then. He said that he didn’t either.” He turns to Alice then, face drawn and exposed. “What if we’re wrong, Alice? What if we’re seeing things that aren’t really there? You didn’t see what he did in that warehouse…what he did to those Librarians…”

“If someone had summoned me and told me that Quentin or one of you had been captured when I was a niffin, I would have laughed and gone to watch the fun.” Alice hisses. Every inch of her is rigid now, drawn up tight and defensive as she glares at Eliot. “I wouldn’t have even thought of saving you, much less healing your injuries.”

Something inside of Eliot calms at that, a small twist of a wound easing and smoothing itself out.

“You think he’s wrong? That there really is a piece left there and he just doesn’t realise?”

“Since when has Quentin ever understood anything about himself?” Alice sniffs and Eliot crumples slightly, conceding the point. It’s what he’d been thinking earlier, after all, before the bloodbath: it would be admittedly just like Quentin to suddenly have access to all the world’s magic and still have no clue that anything is wrong with him.

“We’re going to save him, Eliot.” Alice promises fiercely, eyes sparking. “Don’t let what he did to those Librarians get in your head.”

Eyes, rolling in terror. Blood, hot and thick and dark. Arms, flying through the air.

Meat, abandoned on concrete.

“He butchered them, Alice.”

Alice blinks up at him, mouth twisted wryly as she regards him over the rims of her glasses.

“I once tortured an entire family of lampreys to death because I liked the way their magic sparkled when they died and I was bored. And then I found another nest and I did it again. And again. I didn’t stop. I didn’t _want to_. At least when Quentin sheds blood it’s because he’s protecting you.”

“He said he’d kill everyone in the Neitherlands if it would keep me safe.” Eliot murmurs. Alice laughs at that, eyes dark and wet.

“See? He hasn’t changed at all.”

* * *

Healed as he is, Eliot still feels fragile and stiff come bedtime. He’s spent the past few hours wallowing in a bubble bath just on the right side of being too hot and taking the time to pamper himself with products that have been left abandoned on his dresser for far too long. Nothing helps. The nourishing facemask Margo left behind fails to leave him feeling ‘rejuvenated and freshly inspired’ as promised on the packaging and his usual collection of lotions aren’t particularly relaxing when he can’t stop himself from examining the skin on his hands in minute detail, agitatedly looking for any sign that Quentin’s magic wasn’t wholly successful in bringing the dead flesh there back to life.

Still, when he looks at his reflection afterwards it’s a far cry from the pale, sweaty, disgusting creature that stood before him prior to his bath, so that’s something at least.

He’s just putting the finishing touches to his hair – Lord knows the mess it will be in by morning otherwise – when he hears Kady calling his name. His heart trips over in his chest and he slowly lowers his arms, staring at his reflection. His mirror image is a little wild about the eyes and Eliot can’t exactly blame it – not when they both instinctively know exactly why Kady wants to see him at this time of night.

They have a visitor.

Quietly, cautiously, he slips out of the bathroom. It takes him a moment to locate Kady – she’s already halfway up the stairs to her room, a mug of hot chocolate in her hand – and when he does all she does is confirm his suspicions by tightening her mouth and jerking her head towards the balcony. Eliot turns and sighs. There he is. Crouched on top of the balcony railing, paying no heed to the sharp drop below, Quentin is looking out over the city and cocking his head to listen to the steady hum of New York. His face brightens when he turns back and sees Eliot there. He waves at Eliot eagerly, looking more like an excited child than someone who sadistically eviscerated several people today.

Kady’s expression is concerned, though she hides it with a nonchalant sip of her drink. Lingering on the stairs, she shoots Eliot an inquiring look – _you okay here_?

For a moment, Eliot is tempted to say no. What Quentin did in that warehouse was far beyond anything he expected – even if Alice did torture various creatures during her time as a niffin as she claims, she at least never did it in front of him – and he’s not sure he’s up to facing that particular knowledge just yet. However, he also knows that he owes Quentin his mind right now, if not his life. He can’t just turn his back on that. And experience has shown them all too well that someone will get hurt if he introduces a second person into his interactions with Quentin.

Pulling back his shoulders and internally bracing himself for what he already knows is going to be an emotionally draining conversation, Eliot nods in what he hopes is a confident manner. He knows it won’t do anything to fool Kady, but at least it will reassure her that he knows what he’s doing. She purses her lips but accepts his decision, turning and making the rest of her way up the stairs.

Eliot watches her go. Then he takes a deep breath and makes his way across the room to the balcony.

Quentin has shifted positions by the time Eliot slides the door open and slips outside. He’s sitting on the railing now with his back to the city, kicking his heels carelessly as he waits for Eliot to come closer. He frowns when Eliot doesn’t.

“I thought we were beyond this.” He sighs, regarding Eliot with an expression eerily similar to the one his old high school principal used to wear whenever Eliot was dragged into his office after yet another encounter with the bullies that made his life hell. Weary. Disappointed. A little frustrated at the time being wasted here.

Eliot swallows, hesitating. He shifts his weight slightly, ready to jump back inside if Quentin shows any sign of not appreciating his next words. “That was before I saw what you were capable of now. It’s…frightening, Quentin. You’re not the person I remember and that was always going to change things. It’s inevitable.”

Quentin doesn’t attack. He doesn’t even say anything. He just studies him, gaze raking over Eliot and taking him apart piece by piece as he looks for something known only to him. Eliot sets his jaw and just takes it, meeting Quentin’s blue eyes with his own brown ones and silently daring the niffin to do his worst.

Except that there is no worst. There’s no threat of violence, no cutting retort. Quentin just jerks back, eyes wide and almost hurt as he stares at Eliot.

“You’re giving up on me.”

Eliot blinks. “What?”

“You’re giving up on me. I can see it. There’s a…distance…that wasn’t there before. You’re getting ready to say goodbye.” He clenches his fists, rigid body an illuminated statue against the skyline. “I don’t _want_ to say goodbye.”

Eliot is lost. What did the niffin see in him that makes him think Eliot is ready to say goodbye? After everything that has happened, all of Eliot’s pathetically emotional outbursts and broken pleas, moving past his attempted murder of _Margo_ even, how can Quentin think Eliot is about to give up on his quest to save him?

But then he thinks about the doubt that set into his bones after he saw Quentin take those Librarians out one by one, the poisonous flickers of uncertainty that ate into his marrow and forced him to change his perspective. The way that Alice had to reassure him.

 _Is_ he giving up on Quentin? Is there a part of him that, exhausted from so many months of pain and grief, is just about ready to throw in the towel?

He swallows those feelings back, unwilling to accept them. He promised to be brave. He promised he would stop running away.

“No one is saying goodbye, Quentin.” He says softly. His words don’t exactly help – Quentin still looks like the foundations of his world are coming unstuck – so he does the only thing he can do.

He joins Quentin at the balustrade.

“Better?” He asks. Quentin shrugs, regarding him in silence for a moment before reaching out to touch his cheek where Marcus held him earlier. Eliot steels himself for the touch, bracing himself against the creeping dread he still feels at the idea of those hands touching him after today, but can’t quite manage to hold back his flinch as Quentin’s fingers brush against his skin. The niffin’s face sours and he rips his hand away, leaping off the railing and beginning to pace agitatedly up and down the balcony.

Eliot watches him, a sick feeling burrowing in behind his breast.

“So. Do anything exciting today after we parted?” He tries to keep his tone light and airy, something to cut through the heavy tension that has formed between them, but it comes out dull, a blade that needs sharpening. Quentin pauses in his pacing just long enough to shrug.

“Librarian hunting.”

“Oh.” Eliot thinks of the pair that escaped the warehouse and wonders what state they’re in now. “And what did you do when you found them?” He asks delicately.

Quentin finally stops moving, spreading his hands and raising an eyebrow as he looks at Eliot as if he’s an idiot.

“Are you seriously concerned about them? Do you not remember the bit where they kidnapped you as bait and then tried to liquefy your brain?”

“That doesn’t mean they deserved the fates they got. There’s killing and then there’s _killing_.” Eliot says shakily. He knows that when he sleeps tonight he’ll see that young Librarian’s skin flying off him over and over again.

“There is no difference. That’s just something people say to make themselves feel better for breaking whatever little code of honour they set for themselves. Besides, it was fun.” There’s a wicked twist to Quentin’s lips as he says it, a harsh cruelty that shines bright out of every pore. It doesn’t suit him.

“The old Quentin wouldn’t have thought so. According to Alice you used to struggle with the ethics of controlling bugs.”

Quentin snorts. “The _old Quentin_ was weak. And besides, human me barely thought twice before throwing the Librarians to the wolves in order to get the Monster out of you. You all keep saying how different I am, but I think you just don’t want to admit I’m the same, upgraded and unchained.”

Eliot says nothing. Quentin had no problems going after the Beast and Ember, certainly. And maybe he did take the Monster into the Library knowing full well that he was setting off a bomb among those shelves. But there’s a vast difference between that and killing for pleasure.

Isn’t there?

Gripping the wall tightly, he stares up into the night. The full moon looks swollen and too large for the sky, an unseemly pregnant bulge that makes Eliot feel uneasy and off-balance. It’s a million miles away from the night Quentin held his hand and made the stars fall for him.

“Eliot?”

He shuts his eyes. Everything is a mess. He doesn’t know what to think, what to believe. How far can they take this? How long will it be before he looks at the niffin and realises he can’t recognise anything of the man he loved in there anymore? It was only yesterday that he thought the stolen Library books might hold the answer to everything; how did they end up here, with Eliot questioning everything like this?

“I didn’t touch them. Are you happy now? Jesus.”

He opens his eyes.

“What?” He asks hoarsely. Quentin rolls his eyes, crossing his arms and looking sullenly away.

“I saw how you looked at me in the warehouse. I knew you’d hate it if I did anything else. So I let them get away lightly bruised, with a message that if they come near you and your friends again they’ll regret it.”

Eliot stares at him. He doesn’t know what to say – the idea that Quentin held off from murder just for him is a thought both terrifying and humbling – so instead he focuses on the last part of that revelation.

“They’re your friends too.”

Quentin huffs, tilting his head back and gazing up at the moon that caught Eliot’s eye earlier. “Once, maybe. Now they’re just specks to me.”

“Even Julia? You’ve known her most of your life.” Eliot says quietly. Quentin shrugs, careless.

“That doesn’t mean anything to me. I remember everything – I remember lying under that table, planning trips to Fillory and arguing over what Whitespire really looked like. I remember making up stupid dances and cramming for tests together and practising card tricks just to impress her. But they’re just…things that happened. Nothing more than ghosts from another life.”

“And me?”

“What?”

“Am I just a speck to you? A ghost?” Eliot moves nearer, closing the gap between them.

Quentin looks away, blue sparks fizzling through his cheek. “You know you’re not.”

“The last time we spoke out here things ended on a strange note.” Eliot says gently. He remembers the tingling of magic on his lips and licks them nervously. He tries not to notice Quentin following the movement. “You kissed me, Quentin. And that definitely felt like it meant something to you.”

The niffin says nothing.

“Why am I not just a speck to you, Q?” Eliot prompts. “And don’t you dare try lying – you’ve done far too much for you to pass this off as something small and unimportant.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“What do you want me to say? You matter to me. That’s it. What more is there?” There’s a tautness to his voice now, a sense that a tightrope is being walked somewhere and things are about to come crashing down. Eliot watches the flames flicker frenetically down his throat and knows he’s onto something here. That he just has to push that little bit more.

“But why do I matter to you? You told me that you haven’t got a Shade – how can you care about me without one?”

“Stop it.”

“It’s a simple question, Quentin.”

“I told you to stop it.” The niffin’s fingers are twitching as if he’s fighting the urge to mute Eliot again. Eliot keeps going.

“And I asked you a question. How can you care about me if your Shade burned?”

“I don’t know!” Quentin faces him and suddenly he’s the old Quentin again, helpless and lost. “I don’t know. I have the whole universe to explore; I can go anywhere and do anything. And all I can think about is coming back to you, seeing you. It doesn’t make sense!”

He stamps his foot, sending out a blinding wave of blue sparks. Eliot looks away, shielding his face. He half expects the niffin to vanish whilst he’s not watching, but when he looks back Quentin is crouched down, hands buried in his hair, looking oddly small and vulnerable for a being of cosmic power.

“Q…”

Eliot takes a chance and crouches down next to him, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder and ignoring the way sparks leap up to meet him. He half expects Quentin to lash out, but nothing happens except for the niffin shuddering and tightening his grip on the magic that makes up his hair.

His words hurt more than any physical pain ever could have, though.

“I think I loved you. Before. I loved you so much. It was pathetic – everything I did was for you, to try and get the Monster out of you.”

Eliot shuts his eyes. Well. That confirms what Julia told him before then. There’s no way he can ever deny that Quentin died for him now. 

“All those feelings should have burnt up with the rest of me.” Quentin continues. “Why am I still so _weak_?!”

And _oh_. Eliot remembers this. The way that Quentin’s brain would eat him alive, consuming him bit by bit until all that was left was doubt and self-hatred. So many nights in the Cottage were spent plying Quentin with alcohol until he forgot why he’d been comparing himself to other people in the first place. Eliot had assumed he’d left all that behind him with his physical form – he’d certainly seemed more comfortable in his new skin than he ever had before. Is this yet another thing that Eliot is responsible for?

“Maybe it’s not a weakness.” He tries.

“Says High King Eliot the Emotionally Unavailable,” comes the bitter reply and Eliot winces. Ouch. He guesses he deserved that.

“If it means anything,” he says softly, “I was very glad today that you still cared enough to save me. Even if the outcome was rather bloodier than I’d have preferred.”

Quentin’s face turns thunderous.”They tried to take you away from me. They deserved everything they got.”

Eliot cuts in before they can go on another murderous detour into the finer points of morality: “My point is, if you hadn’t cared about me then chances are it would have taken days for the others to find and rescue us. And who knows what condition we would have been in by that point. So…thanks.”

“I would have burned down the world for you in that moment.” Quentin murmurs. It’s not an exaggeration; there’s nothing but honesty in the niffin’s eyes. By all rights the words should be frightening. They’re hyperbolic, obsessive. And yet…hasn’t Q always been that way for the people he loves? This is the man who once held a niffin inside him to the point of his body breaking down, after all. The man that descended into the very Underworld in order to find his ex-girlfriend’s Shade.

This new Quentin is terrifying. But perhaps not as far from the original as Eliot had started to believe.

“Well, we all know I’m worth it.” He says loftily. Quentin snorts, pulling away. They stand.

“One of these days we’ll be able to talk without choking on our own feelings.” The niffin muses, stretching. Eliot feels his mouth curl into a smile despite himself.

“Doubtful. We have enough baggage between us to fill an entire plane.” He waits for a sign of amusement from the other – a smirk, a snigger, anything. Even a pity chuckle. But he gets nothing.

Instead, Quentin looks uncertain, brow furrowed and shoulders tense as he looks Eliot in the eye.

“Don’t…don’t give up on me, Eliot.” The words sound like a struggle. They haltingly force themselves past his lips like gold leaving an avaricious man’s hand.

Eliot stares at him. He can’t mean what Eliot thinks he means.

“I don’t want to be a human again. I like having power; I like being free. But I also don’t want you to leave me behind. So…keep looking with Alice. See if there’s anything out there. Maybe then one day you’ll accept that this is me now.”

“What if I can’t do that?” Eliot chokes out. It’s not a hypothetical: he genuinely doesn’t know that he can accept a Quentin that isn’t really Quentin. And that’s without the threat of a niffin box hanging over their heads.

“I know you can. Fifty years, Eliot. We’re unstoppable together.” He smiles, turning to go. “See you around.”

“Wait!” Quentin pauses and Eliot leans in, diverting at the last moment to press a light kiss to Quentin’s cheek, ignoring the sparks that sizzle through it. It’s somehow more intimate than anything they’ve done so far in this lifetime. More importantly, it banishes the shadows that have lingered in Quentin’s eyes since Eliot flinched away from his touch. “Bring me back something cool next time.”

Quentin touches his cheek, staring wonderingly at Eliot. Then he smiles and is gone, vanishing into the night in a streak of blue fire.

When Eliot goes back inside, Penny unfurls from where he’s been camped out on the couch. “Well, that was very Romeo and Romeo,” he snorts.

Eliot flips him the bird.

“Fuck off, Penny.” He says pleasantly. Penny shakes his head, heading off to the room he and Julia share.

“Whatever, man. It’s your funeral.”

It’s not until much later, as Eliot is shrugging out of his shirt and slipping it onto its hanger, that he realises Penny must have waited up to make sure he was okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are! Finally, another chapter. I really thought I was going to get this one out quicker. But then it ended up being over 13,000 words long and work decided to step it up another gear, so que sera sera, I guess.
> 
> I hope you enjoy - please leave a comment if you do!


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